Cracked!
by nosleep3
Summary: If Twilight sort of didn't make sense to you before, it really won't make sense to you now. A recharacterization of Bella and a satire of all the things that made you go, "Wait, what?" Dark humor, drama, and snark.
1. Chapter 1

_Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I present to you, in no particular order or relation to each other, rewritten scenes from the Twilight series. I have no set posting schedule_—_this is purely for my own amusement and steam-letting, although I hope you'll be amused as well. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them._

_

* * *

_

From Twilight Chapter 5: "Blood Type"

"You actually listened to me," Edward marveled as he shut the door to the school nurse's office, sealing away the scent of the boy's comparatively bland, flowing blood in favor of a different kind of human distraction. Bella Swan was forever contrary, as far as Edward Cullen was concerned. Of course, she would not have seemed so contradictory if _he'd_ been behaving like a normal person. But Edward insisted on inconsistency—saving Bella one minute, flirting with her the next, and then becoming hostile before proceeding directly to aloof indifference. Bella 'listened' all right, but until now she had no good reason to obey.

In fact, she wasn't obedient out of trust—she didn't think of herself as obedient at all—and her quick exit was based on her own observation, thank you _very_ much. "I smelled the blood."

"People can't smell blood." Edward, ever the Wise Beyond His Apparent Years, pronounced this 'fact' as though it ended all arguments. Not that there _was_ an argument, but he was not in the habit of receiving further commentary after making such declarations.

"Well, I can," Bella protested, her subtle but uncompromising tone catching Edward off guard—_she_ was not in the habit of entering conversations in which she was not treated as an equal partner in the discussion. "That's what makes me sick. It smells like rust…and salt."

Of course the boy stared, though whether it was in wonder at the girl's humanity or at her audacity, Bella couldn't say. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

"Because you smell blood!" he blurted unwisely.

If Bella had a little more time to collect her thoughts, she'd have asked Edward how _he_ knew there was blood when none was obviously visible. Instead, she went with the foremost idea in her head, which was less intrusive but much more macabre. "My dad's a cop. When I spent summers here as a child, sometimes he'd come home reeking of decay from old people who lived alone and fell down their stairs. Trust me: humans can smell blood just fine."

"That's different. Decay is distinctive, but it's not the same as fresh blood." He would certainly know—back when he sought out psychotics to be his next meal, on occasion Edward came across a truly disturbed individual who held on to the corpses of his victims. Those types of killers he made quick work of, finding himself put off his dinner by the stench of rotting death clinging to the murderers' skin. At the moment, he hoped Bella would write off his knowledge of bodily scent differentials to having the town doctor for a father.

"I know," Bella said breezily, as if this were the most normal conversation she'd ever had. With this particular young man it was, if only because it was straightforward, uncensored (on her part, at least), and consisted of the mutual exchange of information. "Decay doesn't nauseate me the way fresh blood does."

"You're not serious." Really, this human girl's contrary nature was beginning to grate on Edward's nerves.

"Once there was a massive logging accident out near La Push," Bella launched into her tale. "The town's only police-trained bloodhound was in surgery, and the next nearest cadaver dog was all the way in the county seat, so Charlie had to use me instead. I located two expired bodies and one live victim. The live one made me nauseous, but the dead ones just smelled dead."

"Okay, now I _know_ this is a joke," Edward laughed. Gruesome though it was, it was certainly imaginative, and quite funny to a vampire. Though why Bella should have a vampire sense of humor instead of a human one was still a mystery.

"Oh no, she's serious," Mrs. Cope piped up, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation and wondering at their conducting it so loudly—if they were well enough to tell this story, they were well enough to go back to class, but this was the most entertaining thing she'd seen all day, so she didn't dismiss them. "For five years after that, we called her Isabella 'Bloodhound' Swan. She has the most sensitive nose in all of Clallam County."

The foreign sensation of personal awkwardness permeated Edward's mind as he contemplated what he must smell like to this particular human girl of such legendary olfactory sensitivity. Rotten flowers? A middle-aged woman's perfume?

"When our police hound died," the secretary continued, oblivious to the young man's silent discomfort, "we named the new one Izzy."

Bella rolled her eyes—she hated that the town's only canine unit was named for her, but she didn't hold it against the dog. "And Charlie wonders why I stopped coming to visit Forks after I turned fourteen." She glanced sharply at Mrs. Cope. "By the way, if my old nickname experiences any resurgent popularity after today, I wouldn't count on Chief Swan letting you flirt your way out of your next traffic ticket, Shelly 'Speed Demon' Cope." Charlie had a wide variety of law enforcement paraphernalia at his house, most notably a police scanner, which Bella had taken to listening to on the nights her father worked second or third shift. It made the house feel less lonely, and the things she learned about the locals came in handy for precisely this type of occasion.

Swallowing carefully, Mrs. Cope replied, "Bella, you still look a little faint. Perhaps you'd like to leave school early? I'd be more than happy to excuse you from your last class."

Bella smiled, thanked Mrs. Cope and Edward for their help, and sauntered out the door and into the parking lot. Edward found himself strangely in need of support to remain standing. It was a rather pleasant sensation.


	2. Chapter 2

_Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I present to you, in no particular order or relation to each other, rewritten scenes from the Twilight series. I have no set posting schedule—this is purely for my own amusement and steam-letting, although I hope you'll be amused as well. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them._

_

* * *

From Twilight__ Chapter 2: "Open Book"_

Bella unloaded her groceries, at first thinking that she hoped her father wouldn't mind her method of food storage placement, then reprimanding herself for such a foolish thought. Here she was, appointing herself responsible for both the grocery shopping and the meal preparation for her household at the age of seventeen, and her concern was upsetting Charlie's kitchen cabinets? Nonsense. He didn't have much that wasn't canned soup, crackers, or pork rinds anyway. She chalked up her momentary insecurity to that boy, Edward Cullen, being absent today after behaving so oddly yesterday, like she'd committed a heinous crime by walking into biology class. And that face he made, like there were skunks about—_he_ was the one who smelled like Consuela, the heavily-perfumed hooker who worked the Phoenix Transit Central Station. Bella sighed, trying to mentally rid herself of the unsettled feelings. In the grand scheme of things, it was a relatively minor incident, but the whole thing was completely throwing Bella off for no good reason, and she didn't like feeling that way. Stupid, snooty, rich boy.

When dinner was started, Bella sighed and fired up her stone-age computer. She didn't want to seem ungrateful—after all, Charlie didn't _have_ to welcome her into his home—but she was irritated that he insisted on buying a cheap, second-hand computer that was clearly made back when CPUs didn't accept any storage device greater than a 3 ½ inch floppy disk. It didn't even have USB connections, for god's sake. And why on earth was he using dial-up instead of broadband? "Ten dollars a month for internet service," was not cost-effective logic, not when it tied up the sixty-dollar-a-month phone line, potentially preventing emergency messages from getting through to the sixty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year police chief. Ridiculous.

Predictably, there were several e-mails from Renee. With a sigh, Bella read Renee's messages. It appeared the first was sent while Bella was still on her flight to Washington.

_Bella,_

_Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi. Mom._

Bella felt a pang of guilt; she should have called her mother as soon as she arrived in Forks instead of waiting two days, but she really didn't have anything much worth reporting, and it was actually something of a relief not to have to reassure her mother every five damn minutes. Also, Bella wasn't stupid; minor league teams didn't have to report to Florida for spring training until February, and it was only four days into January.

The second e-mail came in about eight hours after the first…why on earth was Renee e-mailing her in the middle of the first night, especially with Bella starting school the very next morning?

_Bella,_

_Why haven't you e-mailed me yet? What are you waiting for? Mom._

"Honestly," Bella huffed to herself, "you'd think she was a little lost puppy." This would not be happening if her parents allowed her to have a cell phone. Unlimited text messages, no more need to wait for e-mails. Then again, Renee wasn't working anymore, and whenever she wasn't working she had a poor sense of what other people might be doing with their day. The last thing Bella needed was for her mother to send frantic, repetitive text messages asking after lost articles of clothing and wondering whether the water bill had been paid…in the middle of a trigonometry quiz.

So maybe a cell phone wasn't a good idea after all. Bella loved her mother more than anyone in the world, but Renee never allowed her daughter a moment's peace unless she was on a date or too caught up in a trashy romance novel to want to talk—back in Phoenix, Bella frequently reflected on the fact that the only way to enjoy time to herself was in a large, loud crowd of people content to ignore her. Forks was at least peaceful—it was the only thing she might have liked about small town life—and Bella wanted to have a chance to enjoy the novelty of it while it lasted, before the constant rain inevitably washed away whatever positive outlook she managed to dredge up. E-mails were easier to ignore until she was ready to deal with them.

_Isabella… _the last message said, sent this morning,

_If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie._

"Right," Bella sighed, clicking on the reply button. "Because you can't just call me here at the house. If you're going to make a long-distance call, it's going to be to Charlie at work." So much for the illusion of control over her own communications.

_Mom,_

_I'm writing to you from beyond the veil between the living and the dead. My plane crashed, and Charlie didn't think it was worth his time to call and let you know. By all means, call him now and pester him right in the middle of arresting someone. When you do, make sure you mention how difficult it is for a ghost to send e-mail on a computer that predates the actual internet. Also, tell Phil that Rabbi Darren was right about everything, except for all the stuff that Lama Gyatso was right about, and that other stuff we heard from that Hindu swami that time we got lost in Albuquerque. Remember when we asked him "Where are we?" and the reply took three hours?_

_Your shirt's at the cleaners. The pick-up ticket is tacked up on the cork board in the kitchen, right where I told you it would be before I left. Don't forget to pack an umbrella. Florida is a coastal state, you know. Please drive carefully, and if you and Phil are too sleepy or the weather gets bad, for God's sake pull over and find a hotel for the night. Grieving for my loss is no excuse for bad driving decisions._

_Love you. Miss you. Be safe. And don't worry about me—I'm fine, I promise._

After thinking carefully, Bella added:

_I might not be able to write again for a while, though. I think there's something wrong with my computer. Love, Bella._

After confirming that her message had been sent, Bella went downstairs and looked carefully at the refrigerator, where her father had helpfully posted his schedule for the week, before she took the marinating steaks out of the fridge. She had the money for a new computer, but Charlie wasn't the type to excuse "wasting" funds on a newer model of something he already had a "perfectly decent working version of" at home. She couldn't just tell her father he'd bought an obsolete, piece of crap, electronic paperweight that was only slightly preferential to an abacus and a Pony Express rider, even though he had.

"Bella," Charlie said later, "supper was delicious. When you said you could cook…"

"You were expecting Mom's Three-Bean-and-Marshmallow casserole?" Bella finished for him, making a face. She _hated_ Three-Bean-and-Marshmallow casserole; she wasn't sure what the worst part was, the marshmallows, or Renee's idea that the way to make it patriotic for Fourth of July was by using red kidney beans, white cannellini, and blue jellybeans. "No thanks, I want to keep my food down."

When the dinner dishes were done Bella sat with her father in the living room, watching his favorite sitcom, _CSI: Miami._ "Look at that crap," Charlie jeered at the screen as David Caruso put on his sunglasses. Indoors. At night. Again. "They collect a smeared, partial fingerprint, and they not only turned it into a full thumbprint, they got a criminal database match on it in thirty minutes. Un-freakin'-believable."

The women in Charlie's life (what few there were) liked to say that self-expression was not his forte. They were wrong; a police officer has to be able to express himself in order to write reports and testify in court. Charlie's problem, or rather Renee's problem with him, was that she spoke Flighty, Needy, Overly Emotional Female while he spoke Police Work.

Bella, who was fluent in both, said, "I know, right? That kind of thing takes weeks." She actually enjoyed this show, even if it was painfully inaccurate. Renee never did understand this side of her. "And the women are forever collecting evidence with their own hair down, while the guys are breathing all over the stuff they're supposed to be processing. Contaminate as you go, I guess."

"Sloppy," Charlie agreed. Maybe this Dad stuff wouldn't be as hard as he thought. They could just bond over cop shows and procedural dramas. He didn't even mind that he was missing the NFL playoffs. Much. Come Superbowl Sunday, though…

Bella waited until a Dell commercial aired before she casually mentioned, "By the way, I tried to use my computer this afternoon. I was able to send one e-mail to Mom, but after that it started doing something funny, and then it died on me."

Charlie swore softly.

"We should probably take it somewhere," Bella said. "Any chance it's still under warranty?"

"I bought it off a guy who was upgrading," her father sighed, remembering the gray-haired man who promised the unit was 'top of the line…a few years ago, when it was new.' _A few years, my ass._

"We could take it to the Geek Squad," Bella suggested, managing to get across just the right amount of hopefulness. "It should only cost a few hundred dollars to fix it. Where's the nearest Best Buy?"

"Over a hundred miles away." Charlie pressed his hand to his face. "And I only paid a hundred bucks for the whole computer."

"Probably cost more to fix than it's worth, then," Bella pretended to sympathize.

"Your mother's going to have a fit if she can't get in touch with you," Charlie griped. "It was her one condition to letting you live with me." He sounded a little sad, Bella realized—he really _did_ want her to be here, even if he didn't know what to do with her now that she was in his house.

"We could call that company, Dell," Bella said quietly, thinking about the disappointment in her father's voice. "They put together exactly the kind of computer system you need and ship it to you." After a pause that was just a beat too short, she added, "I have that money I was saving up to buy a car."

Charlie looked at his daughter for the first time. He'd always believed his child was a terrible liar, a quality highly valued in both criminals and teenagers. While he couldn't say she was lying right now, per se, she was definitely hiding something. Even so, he had to admit to himself that a computer that cost less than a quality cellular phone probably wasn't the smartest purchase he'd ever made.

"I'll pitch in to cover tax, shipping, and an extended warranty," Charlie offered, "up to five hundred dollars." He paid more than that in monthly child support checks, and yet his ex-wife somehow couldn't keep all her utilities paid—not that Bella was aware Charlie knew this. He was also perfectly well aware that Renee would not be sending _him _child support now that the tables were turned, but he chose not to pursue it. Bella was already unhappy about being here in this tiny, unexciting town; vilifying her mother wouldn't help anything. "Just don't get anything needlessly expensive. I'm not an ATM."

"Thank you, Dad," Bella smiled, getting up to refill her father's soda.

"And—" he stopped her.

"Yes, Char—Dad?"

"Mark's going out of town this weekend, and he's my K-9 unit guy." Charlie smoothed down the left side of his mustache, something he always did to help himself think. Generally it made the potheads he caught at Forks Cemetery pretty nervous. "I trust it won't be too much trouble for you to take care of Izzy for him while he's gone?"

Bella's smile faltered, but only briefly—it was bad enough when her private thoughts took on an unattractive whiny turn; she wasn't about to resort to ugly faces and a bad attitude like an ungrateful brat. "Of course not," she replied, thinking of the canine that was her namesake. What exactly did one do to entertain a hound dog trained to sniff out drugs, bombs, _and_ dead bodies? In January? Play fetch with snowballs? Let it track down hibernating squirrels? Take it for a walk past the most suspicious-looking house in town and see if it gave some kind of narc signals? Whatever it was, she'd be doing it without one peep of complaint. Small price to pay. "I'll call Dell tomorrow, okay?" She would also work on her argument for subscribing to high-speed internet, but for tonight it was best to quit while she was ahead.

That night Bella tiptoed down the stairs, feeling somewhat guilty but mostly triumphant as she retrieved a bottle of cold water to drink and replaced the large, circular, computer-killing magnet on the refrigerator door. _Mischief managed,_ she laughed to herself.

Charlie, lying awake in his room, heard the sound of his daughter moving through the house like it was her own and smiled. It had been more than three years since Isabella had spent a night under this roof, three years since they'd been an actual family, not just two relatives who vacationed together or spent awkward Christmases in Arizona in his ex-wife's living room. _Skullduggery,_ Charlie mused, thinking of his friends who had teenage hell-raisers of their own. _I'll take it._

Small price to pay, indeed.


	3. Chapter 3

_Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I present to you, in no particular order or relation to each other, rewritten scenes from the Twilight series. I have no set posting schedule—this is purely for my own amusement and steam-letting, although I hope you'll be amused as well. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them._

_

* * *

_

_From Midnight Sun Chapter 1: "First Sight"_

Edward sat in the cafeteria with his siblings at lunch time, moody as ever, pretending he was trying to drown out the human thoughts around him. He wasn't. He looked bored, and acted bored, and perhaps he really _was_ bored, but as it was "sort of" his responsibility to know how humans reacted to his family, he couldn't actually afford to ignore them, now could he? That would be a contradiction.

His brother Emmett and his sister Rosalie were thinking about sex. Again. Whenever Rosalie wasn't thinking about how beautiful she was, and whenever Emmett wasn't thinking about kicking ass, and if they were in each other's presence, they were thinking about sex. Edward swore they did it on purpose just to screw with him. It was irritating, and if it weren't for the fact that the Forks High campus was too small for any part of it to be outside of his mental hearing range, Edward would be encouraging them to avail themselves of a faraway janitor's closet just so he didn't have to hear them fantasizing.

Alice, her mind working at its usual mile per minute, was simultaneously concerned about a number of superficial things (but in a wistful, I-can't-remember-what-it-was-like-to-be-human-so-that-makes-me-not-shallow-like-the-_human_-shopaholic-image-obsessed-teenagers sort of way), along with a few deep thoughts about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, which she overheard a cluster of nerds discussing a few minutes ago. Apparently it had something to do with an incorrect multiplication problem (what kind of profound truth was based on 7 x 6 = 48? Was it something to do with base-8 math?). She was also apprehensive about Jasper and his appetite today—he hadn't fed in two weeks.

While she and Edward had their silent discussion about Jasper's thirst, and even while Jasper himself was imagining satiating said thirst with the help of a nearby student, in a hidden corner of his mind Jasper wondered why Alice and Edward thought they could fool him. Alice's distress was always plain as day, and Edward's blatant lack of confidence was almost its own shade of black. Jasper held back an urge to whisper aloud, "For the love of god, would you two shut up already? Your mental conversation is louder than human screams of terror."

He quite missed human screams of terror. Not the terror itself, of course—talk about a total downer—but from far away the screams always did whet his appetite.

"Jasper!" Edward hissed, disgusted by memories of Jasper glutting himself on an entire camp full of _vaqueros_. "Do you _mind?_"

"Not at all," Jasper replied lazily. Even after fifty years together, Edward still didn't get why Jasper lived as he did—not just abstaining from human blood, but living among vampires who _valued_ human life. Edward would say of himself that he was a vegetarian because that was the way Carlisle taught him, because he'd learned the error of his ways through personal experience, because he sympathized with the humans as much as any vampire mind-reader can, and because he had a conscience. Jasper didn't have a conscience, at least not in the same way Edward did. Jasper chose not to feed from humans because their emotions made him uncomfortable, plain and simple, and he hated feeling that way. Edward suppressed his natural urges for the same reason, at the root of it, but he felt the need to aggrandize his choice with lofty ideals about the preciousness of human souls. Hell, if that's what it took to make the thirst easier to bear, Jasper wasn't going to disillusion his brother, but that didn't mean he shared the same philosophy. He wasn't even confident that Edward believed his own bullshit, not with the way Edward was always claiming that human thoughts were insignificant. If he genuinely believed humans' thoughts were worthless, why were their souls precious? And if a creature's soul was precious regardless of its thoughts and feelings, why was it less of a moral crime to feed on a mother bear protecting her defenseless cubs than a human female doing the same thing? Edward's code of ethics was just…confusing, and if that made it harder for Edward to not hate himself, it was all his own fault. For Jasper, vegetarianism (a ridiculous misnomer if he ever heard one) was much simpler mentally but more difficult to endure physically: humans were food, but Jasper was on a diet.

"The thing about diets," Edward said with a frown, "is that they're something one doesn't necessarily feel committed to when the temptation is strong. Which is why you tend to have problems, Jasper."

"The thing about mind-readers," Jasper answered smoothly, "is that they can't distinguish between a private thought and an invitation for conversation. Which is why right now I have a problem with _you._"

"Jasper," Alice began, hoping to soothe her irritated, hungry husband, "would you like me to pick up something for you to drink?"

He hummed thoughtfully, absorbing his wife's positive vibes and letting her bring back his smile. One benefit of having an almost perpetually cheerful mate—she made being an empath into a good thing. "Sounds nice. Something from Don Carlos, if you don't mind?"

Don Carlos Carnicería was the local butcher shop, owned and operated by the human Carlos Rodriguez and his wife who, like half of the I.C.E.-harassed* Mexicans in Forks, were actually born in Washington. He took great pride in his work and was well-liked by both the general public and the proprietors of every reputable slaughterhouse within two counties. The owners of Thriftway grocery, well-known and avoided for their terrible meat selection, had actually tried to have their competitor deported (secretly, of course). Upon discovering that Mr. Rodriguez was a U.S. citizen who tended to laugh whenever some idiot shouted _la migra _at him and expected him to run, they attempted to buy him out. It didn't happen, and the residents of Forks continued to shop at Don Carlos for both their mundane and specialized carnivorous needs. Mr. Rodriguez, proudly servicing a population of Anglos, natives, Hispanics, blacks, and even a Vietnamese family, was accustomed to customers asking for steak, ground beef, filet mignon, fajita meat, various fowl, venison, cow stomachs, intestines, cow heads, pig heads, pig feet, liver, tongue, brains, blood sausage, the occasional rabbit, and chicken feet. Whenever a Cullen came in and asked for a quart of blood, it didn't faze him in the least—the aforementioned Vietnamese family asked for it all the time to make _tiết canh_ (which resembled coagulated duck blood gelatin sprinkled with peanuts), and families from Monterrey made their own savory version of blood soup. So clearly, obtaining animal blood for human consumption was not only perfectly acceptable in several non-American cultures, it was available for sale and regulated by the FDA. The only problem the Cullens had was getting it while it was still fresh—chilled blood had to be reheated, and good luck not getting funny looks in the home-ec classroom for trying to stick _that_ in the microwave.

Alice rose, looking ahead to see if anyone would notice her ditching school for half her lunch break, while Edward sighed and returned to his incessant brooding. He wished Alice had offered to get him a drink as well—it had been two weeks for him, too, and he was every bit as thirsty as his brother.

_Edward Cullen._

Edward turned toward the source of the thought, an annoying reflex he couldn't seem to shake, even though he had successfully purged himself of every other physical reflex he ever had. Be that as it may, upon looking in the direction of his name being thought, he locked eyes with a human, her eyes being the color of chocolate. Or fecal matter. He wasn't sure which, not having taken much time to examine either in nearly ninety years.

The chocolate/shit-brown eyes belonged to the new girl, Bella Swan, who every student had been thinking of all day. _Because clearly, this is a school populated by people who think of others more than themselves._ Edward smirked at his own inside joke. Everyone _noticed_ the new girl, and three or four males in the junior class were clearly contemplating asking her out while three or four females were deciding if she would be worth making friends with or not (_she not prettier than me, but attracts attention in my direction, which is perfect_ versus _her dad's the police chief, she'll totally rat us out if someone brings a joint to a party_). But beyond that, most people speculated about her when they had nothing better to think about, then went about their usual business. Many of them were still recovering from the raging kegger they attended over New Year's weekend, the lightweights.

It was a full minute before Edward realized the thought he'd heard was not coming from Miss Swan herself, but from Jessica Stanley.

Jessica prattled on to the new girl about the Cullen family and their barely legal incestuous relationships, which for some reason Chief Swan chose not to arrest them for, most likely because the benefit of having a fancy, big-shot doctor in their underequipped Podunk hospital outweighed the negative impact of dancing around the technicalities of a little thing called Revised Code of Washington 9A.64.020. As Edward relayed to Emmett the highlights of the human conversation he was eavesdropping on, he reflected on the dichotomy of human nature. They were instinctively afraid of vampires, so they gave the Cullen family a wide berth. But they were also attracted to vampires, so they fantasized about the Cullens, too, sometimes in normal pairings, sometimes in orgies, the sick bastards. _Pick an instinct and stick with it,_ Edward often wanted to shout, _I don't even care which one anymore, just make up your minds already!_

But he did care, to some extent. Edward sighed, reluctantly remembering Jessica's fantasies about him. He was glad she'd stopped. He couldn't tell his brothers he was glad she'd stopped, because a) he was supposed to be maintaining the position that her human thoughts were of no value, and b) he knew he'd be accused of homosexuality, which wasn't the case, but it still grated on his nerves. Mostly, his problem was that Jessica just didn't do anything for him, but also, having been privy to nearly a century of human and vampiric sexual thought, he knew her expectations were almost comically unrealistic. _Virgins._

He sighed again, wishing he wasn't lumped into that category, too.

Then he wondered if the new girl met the criteria as well. She seemed so shy, but those shy ones could fool you—at least a third of them were sexual freaks or social deviants behind closed doors. If only he could hear just a whisper from her mind. She obviously kept looking in his direction, but what on earth did she think of him? Did she find him attractive, or repulsive? Was she comparing him to human boys? Did she want him to bend over so she could check out his ass? Wait; did he _want_ her to want to check out his ass?

By the time lunch was over, Edward was thoroughly frustrated with the new human and her invisible, inaudible, _obviously significant_ thoughts.

He was so preoccupied, in fact, that he didn't notice Jasper noticing his irritation. Jasper frowned, but said nothing, turning his own thoughts to Alice, who bounded up to him with a 32-ounce lidded Styrofoam cup and straw. Don Carlos didn't _give_ her the straw, of course; that would have been weird. Edward kept a supply of straws in his Volvo. It wasn't the strangest thing he had in there—if anyone ever asked why he had a stash of mortuary bags in his trunk, his prepared answer was _they're left over from my family's Halloween decorations._

"Mmm," Jasper smiled, took a sip from the proffered cup, and immediately began to feel less grumpy. "Fresh. Thank you, Alice. Is this pig?"

"Milk-fed baby goat," Alice grinned. "Apparently there have been requests lately for _cabrito._"

"I'll be your _chupacabra**,_" Jasper flirted.

Alice laughed and threw an arm around Jasper's waist. "You're such a tease. Can I have a taste?"

A freshman boy, who was walking behind them, ducked into a nearby bathroom to dry-heave and silently repeated the mantra _I have an overactive imagination, the Cullens are just weirdoes, I have an overactive imagination, the Cullens are just weirdoes…_

Edward really should have been paying attention to that panicked thought. Instead he was battling his own thirst as Bella Swan's scent wafted his way in biology class. All thoughts of her "precious human soul" vanished as he held himself in place with all the willpower he could muster, lest he gorge himself in front of God and everyone. It would have been so easy to kill the entire classroom of people just to have the peace and time to enjoy his meal, but that would be bad. Wasteful. Better to wait until class was over, he reasoned. After all, if he was going to cheat on his diet with a bona fide feast, it was best to indulge in private.

_No! No, no, no, this is so wrong, I am not a monster, she can't make me kill her…_he told himself as he tried to hold his breath and prayed Mr. Banner wouldn't call on him to speak. Because Edward, being the self-pitying, responsibility-shirking prick he was, chose to make this everyone else's fault in his mind, not his own. Later, when his head was clear again, he would chastise himself for that, but for now his self-flagellation was nowhere to be found as he focused entirely on not behaving like the predator nature formed him to be.

The girl looked upset, though whether that was out of fear or anger Edward couldn't be certain, and he didn't dare scrutinize her further to check, lest he bite her blushing face right off. Meanwhile, Bella took notes on the biology lecture, occasionally doodling in the margins to distract herself from the impossibly rude boy sitting next to her. All Edward could do was cling to the table for dear life and wait for his fifty-five minutes in hell to end. Oh, damn this girl and her intoxicating, delicious…

Edward was mercifully distracted from his burning throat by the girl's doodles and nonsense words. Perhaps, he decided, getting a glimpse into her thoughts this way would remind him that she was a person and thus spare her life. Or, if that didn't work because her thoughts turned out to be just as insipid as Jessica's, he'd at least feel reassured that he wasn't killing someone who was likely to find the cure for cancer or anything.

Bella, sensing that the stare of the well-dressed, sour-faced _jerk-off_ was now focused on her paper instead of her, recovered some of her composure. Grinning wickedly, she drew a picture of a showerhead and a bar of soap. _Hint, hint, asshole. Rich boys should be able to afford daily showers. And some manners. After all that hype Jessica fed me, I have to say I'm unimpressed._ As an afterthought, she began artfully inking and embellishing the word that had entered her mind the moment her hypersensitive nose caught a whiff of Edward Cullen.

_Wait a minute,_ Edward wondered, _who the hell is Consuela?_

* * *

* I.C.E.: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Slang term for this agency is _la migra._ 13% of the population of Forks is Latino.

** _chupacabra_: (Spanish) Goatsucker, a mythical creature said to inhabit the Americas, believed to attack and drink the blood of livestock, especially goats.


	4. Chapter 4

_To tell you the truth, I'm not sure where exactly this story is taking me; unlike my other stories, the whole thing isn't prewritten. Hopefully it's still fun, though. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them._

_

* * *

_

_Previously: Bella tricked her father into letting her get a new computer, or thought she did, but Charlie gave her a chore as part of the deal: babysit the Forks PD canine unit bloodhound for the weekend._

_From Twilight Chapter 2 and Midnight Sun Chapter 2: "Open Book"_

Today was just not going well. At all. Damned Mondays.

First of all, Bella spent the entire weekend looking after Izzy the Drug-Sniffing Wonder-Hound, as ordered by her father. It wouldn't have been so bad—Izzy was actually well behaved—but after her first full week of school, Bella would have liked the opportunity to go catch a movie in Port Angeles. She wasn't overly enthused about Mike Newton's attention, especially since it seemed to incite jealousy in Jessica Stanley, but even so, Bella was sensible of the compliment to herself when Mike asked her out for Saturday. Telling him _sorry, I'm dog-sitting _not only sounded like an incredibly lame excuse, it made him look like someone kicked his three-legged puppy. Bella wasn't interested in him, but that didn't mean she wanted to hurt the poor guy's feelings. Judging by the look on his face this morning, he wasn't entirely over the slight.

Another problem with Mondays was…well, the smell.

Unlike most hypersensitive people, Bella didn't suffer from allergies, or at least nothing that a weekly tablespoon of locally produced honey in the spring and fall wouldn't curb. She did, however, suffer discomfort when in proximity to strong scents. Izzy's dog smell grated on the nerves—Mark (Bella thought of him as Deputy Mark, even though technically he was Officer Mark) kept his dog/partner Officer Izzy very clean, but he didn't normally bathe her in January due to the severe weather. Several walks outside when there were lulls in the rain, a bottle of waterless dog shampoo, and a game of Find Which House Is Baking Special Brownies made the daylight hours bearable, even fun, especially when the game resulted in Charlie getting that gleam in his eyes while his face turned purple right before he put his gun belt back on and excused himself for the evening. That was the first time Bella learned the entertainment value of the police scanner. But the trouble was that Izzy liked Bella and wanted to sleep on a rug in her room. Friday, Saturday, _and_ Sunday night.

It was hard to fall asleep when her nasal cavity was being assaulted. This did not make for a restful weekend or a very pleasant Monday morning.

In Bella's experience, the worst smells were usually to do with people. And after a weekend of comparative solitude, Monday meant the sudden shock of several hundred pungent human beings. Most people, in their natural state, smelled of sweat, their own particular combination of hormones, soap from their most recent shower, and varying amounts of laundry soap and deodorant. Bella didn't exactly _like _it, but after many years of smelling people in the desert heat, she was used to it. Dollar-store strawberry-scented shampoo was usually enough to drown out the general smell of the masses, but some people (like that bitchy girl, Lauren Mallory) wore lots of fragrance that penetrated her olfactory shield. Bella hated it, but she found she could discern patterns. Some, like Lauren and Consuela the Phoenix Transit Station Prostitute, wore heavy perfume to attract romantic partners. Others, like Tyler the smartass, did it to mask a problem with incurable body odor. Tyler's cheap cologne clashed with Lauren's heavy perfume—no matter what Lauren's intentions, those two would never make any headway as a couple if they didn't coordinate their scents to create a mutually appealing combination.

Today sucked because of no sleep, because of the lingering dog smell that would surely not come out until Bella's bedroom was properly aired out, and because the cold weather would not allow for open windows to allow for airing out. Today sucked because it was, apparently, the first snowfall of the year, and all the other kids spent the morning throwing slushballs at each other and expected Bella, who'd never seen snow, never _wanted_ to see snow, to find it charming and amusing to have melting ice trickling down the back of her neck and seeping into her sweater. Today sucked because the administration cranked up the heat in the classrooms, making everyone smell like whatever they had for breakfast, and because of a pop quiz in math that didn't go well. And most of all, today sucked because, after a week of relative peace, Bella walked into the cafeteria at lunch, looked across the wide room to the table only one group of people ever sat at, and promptly lost her appetite when she realized that she'd be spending her biology hour trying to ignore the sweet stench of Edward Cullen.

It didn't help matters that he seemed to be staring at her through half of lunch. If anything, that made it harder to resist the bewildering urge to stare right back, but Bella was determined. Edward was an ass to her last week, and while she didn't want to hold a grudge for the rest of the school year (those tended to blow up in one's face at the most inopportune times), that didn't mean she was willing to silently put up with more assholery. Bella strode into Bio, arriving in class before him, confused by the way she simultaneously wished he would slink back to whatever rock he disappeared under _and_ felt glad (or just relieved, maybe) to know he was home.

"Hello."

The voice was the same one Bella remembered from his persuasive but ultimately fruitless effort to have himself extracted from this class, when he flirted shamelessly with the school secretary like a teenaged man-whore. Bella did not need to look up from her books to know his voice came from the extreme edge of the table, as far away as he could sit without moving his stool into the main aisle. She wondered why he didn't just ask for a different seat altogether if the idea of sitting with her was so revolting to him, but Bella also knew how this worked. After a lifetime of being forced to sit by whomever an instructor assigned, she knew it would be impolitic to ask to be moved, especiallyif the reason was 'my tablemate smells weird.' Not that she expected the Cullen boy to be considerate of her feelings, but maybe he had concluded that it might be unwise to piss off the police chief's daughter.

If he had better sense, he would have come to that conclusion much, much sooner.

Hazarding a glance his way, she was momentarily stunned by the smile on his face, the friendly expression. Unfortunately, he didn't smell any better than he did last week, but he wasn't making 'bitch, I will cut you' faces this time, so she could play nice. "My name is Edward Cullen," he said politely, managing to speak without having to breathe yet. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."

A few snappy comebacks flitted through Bella's mind. _'Of course you had a chance to introduce yourself. You just chose to be a punk.' 'I don't care how high your insurance premiums will be, I am not talking Charlie into dismissing your speeding tickets.' 'Shalom Aleichem,'_ which would please Rabbi Darren if he could see and hear it. Instead, she said, "I see you've been talking to your brothers and sisters about me."

Suddenly flustered, Edward found himself stammering for what felt like the very first time in his long life. "I…what…excuse me?" At the sight of the corner of Bella's mouth twitching, Edward mentally shook himself to regain his rhythm. _Control yourself, Edward,_ he thought. _How does she know that?_

"This isn't a very large school," Bella replied, her eyes returning to her notebook, where she found a piece of scratch paper and began doodling an eye. She couldn't draw a full face worth a crap, but thanks to the honing of her mad doodle skills since the sixth grade, Bella could draw an eye like nobody's business. "I've only been here a week, but that's long enough for me to tell everyone who spoke to me that I prefer Bella over Isabella. Your siblings haven't spoken to me _at all_," and yes, there was just a hint of bitterness about that discernible in her voice, "but they aren't deaf, so I assume they overheard my preference and told you."

"Oh," Edward replied lamely. Clearly this girl had powerful deductive reasoning skills. And even though her logic was not precisely correct, her supposition certainly was: Edward had spoken to his siblings about Bella at length.

"By the way," she said just as Mr. Banner slipped into the classroom, "I'm still waiting for an apology."

Mr. Banner called for class to begin immediately, sparing Edward from having to formulate an immediate response. Which was a good thing, since the best he could come up with were raised eyebrows at her direct approach. Unnerved, he turned his attention to other minds that were easier understood.

Bob Banner, biology teacher and closeted hentai fan, hated his job. He disliked teenagers on principle, believed they were all slackers, and that their disinterest and idiocy worsened every year. Even the "smart kids" like Edward, he loathed, because they tended to have a smug attitude, as though just because they understood the textbook after a single reading, or looked up mitosis on Wikipedia, it meant they knew more than a man with an actual, bona fide Bachelor of Science degree. The fact that Edward had _graduate _degrees in more than one scientific field, including two degrees in medicine, would not have deterred Bob Banner's dislike one bit, had he known about it. All Bob wanted to do was pack up his erotic cartoon collection, hop into a far nicer car than the beater he owned, and start driving south until he reached Tijuana. Unfortunately, this was the real world, so he was stuck handing out microscope slides to a bunch of pimple-creamed, hormone laden miscreants and hairsprayed airheads, demanding that they demonstrate their understanding of mitosis without the aid of textbooks.

Another day, Edward might have sympathized with Bob about being forced to spend his days cooped up with idiot children (though not the bizarre fixation with animated tentacles). Today, however, Edward was far too busy with his own two-fold agenda. Item One: trying to breathe without killing the appetizing girl next to him. Leaning away from her, he managed to gulp in some air through his mouth rather than his nose. It only helped a little, but at least he got enough air to speak again, which was essential for Item Two: trying to charm Bella into not hating him. He wondered if she really _did_ hate him—a glimpse into the minds of her human companions revealed that she hadn't been talking about his rude behavior from the previous week. Speaking of which…

"Ladies first, partner?" Edward offered, waving his hand at the microscope and slides.

Bella wanted to be a smartass about it. She wanted to comment on him acquiring manners on his extended vacation, to point out that most people only got _two_ weeks off school for winter break, to assure him that 'ladies first' was not an acceptable substitute for 'sorry for being such a douchebag.' She wanted to ask him why he didn't buy his girlfriend some nicer perfume for Christmas, and watch him splutter as she called him out on secretly dating an older woman when everyone in school believed he was just too haughty and uptight to bother with singling anyone out.

She did not want to look up at him and get caught in that uneven smile. Which was exactly what happened. _Damn him._

"Or I could start, if you wish." His smile melted away, thus enabling Bella to think clearly again.

"Slide please." She adjusted the microscope and slide, bringing the onion root cells into focus. "And that's not an apology, either. Prophase."

Edward, still feeling off kilter and not liking it one bit, double-checked her answer before writing it on their lab sheet. He was not in the habit of apologizing to people, with only a single exception: the day he returned from his years of feeding on humans and begged his father's forgiveness. In every situation since that day, he'd held the moral high ground, whether anyone agreed he actually belonged there or not, and apologized to no one, not even when he was rude or proud or haughty, not even when he knew perfectly well he was hurting someone's feelings. His attitude did absolutely nothing to endear him to his family, but they let a lot go with him and tended to be more forgiving than he deserved, partly because his gift was an asset to them, and partly because he had good qualities in there somewhere. Edward was polite only when it suited him and too caught up in his own guilt over his gruesome past to bother with remorse for any of what he deemed minor offenses in the present. With this girl staring at him, offended, expectant, and clearly not going anywhere, he realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way he treated people.

"I apologize," he said, the delivery a little stiff but still sincere.

"Why do I get the feeling," Bella murmured, removing the first slide, "that hell just froze over?"

Edward only smiled. Wishing to check her work (because he didn't want a bad grade or anything, even though the occasional bad grade might have made him seem, oh, _normal_), he reached over to stop her from taking the slide and accidentally touched Bella's hand. She flinched away immediately, shocked both by the cold skin and the sensation of just having stood in a puddle while sticking a fork in a wall socket. Meanwhile, Edward was comparing the same phenomenon to the time he climbed the needle of the Empire State Building during an electrical storm. That was the day he realized two things: lightning and fire are both made of vampire-killing, super-heated plasma, and his self-preservation instinct was stronger than his depression.

It made him wonder what might be even stronger than the will to live. It made Bella think twice about being so cavalier when saying things like 'hell froze over.'

"Sorry," Edward grumbled, setting to the task of examining the slide and confirming Bella's answer without actually having to look at her, as if that might keep him from smelling her. Scientists had long ago proven that eyes were for seeing and noses for smelling, not vice versa, but that completely slipped his mind.

The pair of them finished their assignment without saying much, each puzzling over what the other was really thinking, though in Edward's case it was less curiosity or deduction and more like an exercise in futility. Bella, however, had no intention of obsessing unnecessarily and returned to her doodling. Edward peered at the page, curious about even the most trivial creation of her mind. Because he had _no life._ Even Mr. Banner's lewd mental pictures of the Simpsons weren't enough to distract him. Feeling the very eyes she was drawing upon her, Bella looked up from the black irises on her paper…and into a pair of gold ones.

"Did you get contacts?"

"No." _What a random question._

Bella raised a dubious eyebrow, but said, "Oh. I thought there was something different about your eyes." _Why is he lying? It's not even a plausible cover-up; obviously his eyes are a completely different color. Does he expect people to believe his eyes just change color on their own?_ Unimpressed and somehow disappointed, she turned away from him and contemplated what kind of woman would ever put up with his nonsense. Meanwhile, Edward had a brief panic attack as he realized not being able to read someone's mind made successful lying into a thing that required much more effort than he was accustomed to putting forth.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" Edward tried. At her silence, he elaborated, "The rain. It melted the snow." The weather—perfectly safe topic. All the other humans were on about it. For some reason Edward couldn't put together even the simplest logic: girl from Arizona + snow in her face this morning = fierce hatred of snow.

"I realize precipitation is necessary for the environment," Bella said curtly, not looking up. "But on the whole, I prefer the kind that can't be mashed up and used as projectiles." Without missing a beat, she added, "And I hope that's not your idea of chatting me up." _This guy really must not remember how to make headway with a girl. Am I supposed to be swooning because he greeted me and made lame conversation? Damned easy chicks, they ruin it for everyone else._

"It's…no." Edward took another breath through his mouth, making Bella wonder why he was such a mouth-breather. Deviated septum, perhaps? "You don't like the cold, I take it."

"How astute of you." His lying about the contact lenses left Bella feeling catty and contentious. "Before you ask, I hate the rain, too."

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live, then." _Go back to Arizona, so I won't have to kill you. Then again, I still might go find you and devour you. I wonder if all the girls in Phoenix smell this delicious…no! Bad! Stop it!_

"Not so much difficult as annoying," Bella answered honestly. It would be far less annoying if the constant rain would spread freshness around and wash away all the other smells immediately instead of enhancing them first. It sure wasn't doing this boy any favors. If he liked the rain so much, maybe he should go stand in it for a while, since he hadn't bothered to shower after whatever it was his girlfriend did to him.

"Then what are you doing here?" Edward demanded rudely. _Making me hungry, trying my patience…_

"Besides minding my own business?" Bella said sharply, tired of conversing with this aromatic boy.

"Yes, besides that," Edward replied, a little softer but no less curious.

"It's complicated." Bella looked away again. _Take a freakin' hint._

"I think I can keep up," Edward assured her.

"Do you lack even the most basic social skills," Bella snapped, "or do you just not know how to read a situation?"

Actually, Edward had no idea how to read a situation. He'd been reading minds so long, things like body language and subtle hints were incomprehensible to him—only the most obvious of facial expressions were clear. "I'm just asking."

"And the fact that I've yet to answer tells you nothing?"

Edward cocked an eyebrow. "Burned down the gym in Phoenix?"

Bella cracked an unexpected smile. "Been watching _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ reruns, have you?"

A frown. "How did you know—I mean, tell me why you'd move here if it's so unpleasant for you."

With a sigh that set Edward's throat on fire, Bella simply said, "My mother got remarried." She didn't particularly like the knowing look on Edward's face. "It's not what you're thinking," she tried to assure him.

"Your mother wanted to enjoy just being a newlywed," Edward guessed, eager to satisfy his curiosity so he could move on, "and you were cramping her style."

Bella shrugged. "Okay, maybe it is what you're thinking. But she's not boarding me here like a pet at a kennel while she's on vacation. I volunteered."

"Her husband made you uncomfortable until you selflessly opted to run away." In the span of two seconds, Edward imagined a complete scenario, featuring a verbally abusive older man with a scary Terry O'Quinn routine spouting off about 'order in the home' and a lot of other crap from the original version of _The Stepfather_ circa 1987. _Mystery solved,_ Edward decided. _I can now kill her. Or at least not feel intrigued enough to stick around in Forks anymore. Anywhere, USA, here I come._

"No, Phil's fine," Bella replied, thereby dissolving Edward's morbid fantasy. "A little young for Renee," and maybe a little naïve for thinking Renee wouldn't eventually get bored with him, "but he's not a bad guy or anything. He travels a lot, and I wanted my mother to be able to go with him."

"Truck-driver?" Edward guessed, starting in on a whole new set of movie genres. He liked movies; even horror films had the benefit of story resolution often lacking in real life. If he could think of Bella's life as a film with a beginning, middle, and end, he could tell himself that he was just one of the extras, perhaps a tertiary character. Someone who would not impact the plot. Though he _hoped_ Bella Swan's life wasn't a truck-driver slasher film. Spy movies were safer. "Or maybe a federal agent?"

"Circus performer," Bella deadpanned. "He's the guy that gets shot out of the cannon."

It was Edward's turn to smile. "You don't see that trick too often anymore." After a few more careful breaths and a reminder that reality was rarely as neat as a movie, Edward asked again. "So why are you really here?"

Bella found herself willing to answer. She couldn't have said why, except that she didn't want this stranger thinking the people she cared about were the terrible human beings he initially presumed they were. "My mother…she's raised me by herself since I was a baby." Maybe she didn't do everything the way Charlie would have done it (indeed, Renee didn't parent her child the way most reasonable people would have), and Bella could hardly say Renee sacrificed everything she ever wanted, but she _did_ make sacrifices for her daughter instead of just leaving the girl with Charlie while she ran off to do her own thing.

"It's tough, being a single mom without losing a sense of self," Bella continued, thinking fondly of Renee's quirks. "But now I'm too old to need my mommy to hold my hand, so I figured I'd come here and be with my dad so that Renee can have a chance at the happiness and freedom she always wanted." And also, a little bit, to make sure Renee was used to taking care of herself before Bella went off to college and couldn't help her anymore, and to see if Renee would learn to handle an adult relationship without Bella there to mediate every time there was a lovers' spat. Not that anyone else needed to know all that.

Edward really _looked_ at Bella, seeing beyond the plain face for the first time. He had no idea what kind of friendships this human made in the previous week, and it was obvious that she wasn't saying nearly as much as she was thinking, but he was willing to bet she hadn't opened up this much to anyone else. "Now you're unhappy," he decided.

Bella quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'm irritated with the weather. I'm annoyed by how far away everything is, like movie theaters and book stores and places to practice any religion other than Christianity. And I miss my mother. But I don't see how that translates to unhappiness."

"So you've been suffering in silence," Edward confirmed. _Okay, **now** the mystery is solved. Mostly. Is she not a Christian, or was that a comment on the lack of diversity in Forks? Would lack of diversity for diversity's sake make her sad?_

The look Bella gave him at that moment made him feel self-conscious and ridiculous. "Just because I'm not enthused about a few aspects of Forks doesn't mean I'm some kind of whiny, emo, self-pitying brat who hates everything. This isn't the most thrilling place I've ever lived, but I won't be here forever." Unaware of her unintentional judgment stinging Edward's pride, she turned back to her scratch paper and started drawing a cactus. "Eventually I'll graduate and go away to college. I've got one all picked out, and two back-ups. This is just a stop along the way."

"A surprisingly healthy attitude," Edward praised her. One he would do well to adopt, actually, but he didn't, at least not lately. Like many centenarians, he suffered from a sad lack of maturity half the time, though he did not have the excuse of senility. Just hard-headedness. "Impressive, Bella. You're much more ambitious than most people."

Bella glowered, but said nothing. What was he expecting, a vapid, brainless drama queen? Like his skanky girlfriend who seemed to have doused him in Summer's Eve feminine wash at some point today? Or was he just blowing smoke up Bella's ass while he laughed at her in his derisive head?

"Have I offended you again, Miss Swan?" _My, but this girl is touchy today._

Bella was beginning to see why the Cullens kept to themselves, and why it was better that way: they had no esteem or respect for anyone else. "You sound like you've never met anyone who cared or even thought about their own future." What she didn't realize was that Edward's comparison was based on a century of listening to the minds of petty criminals, the homeless, tourists, coffee shop baristas, liberal arts majors…basically the unmotivated dregs of American society. Bella looked around the room at the other students. "They have ambitions, too, if you'd take the time to talk to some of them and find out."

He almost told her that she was giving everyone far too much credit. It wouldn't have been true, though. Many of the human students _did_ have ambitions; they just weren't likely to come to fruition. Edward was a firm believer in attainable goals. Jessica's desire to lose five pounds before the spring dance was unnecessary, but attainable. Her desire to become a famous actress, starring opposite George Clooney (a surprising choice for someone her age), was not. Angela's desire to go to college, get a nursing degree, and work in an emergency room was difficult, but it was still attainable. Mike's desire to have a three-way with two Playboy models was not.

Edward's desire to get through the rest of this class without killing Bella Swan was probably attainable.

His desire to forget about this girl, even if he moved to the opposite side of the world and lived in a cavern half a mile underground, was not.

He sighed, a human habit he sometimes reverted to when he was too deep in thought. Unfortunately, it expelled the last of his air, and he forgot he was supposed to be breathing through his mouth when he inhaled.

_Sweet Jesus, but she smells mouthwatering! Wait a minute…_

"Bella," Edward asked when he had enough control to speak without murdering people or groaning like he was mid-orgasm (where the hell did _that_ come from?), "did you get a dog?"

Bella pressed a hand to her face and shook her head. _Fucking Mondays…_


	5. Chapter 5

_Today's chapter went off in a bit of a weird direction. I like it anyway._

_

* * *

_

_Previously: Mondays suck._

_From Twilight Chapter 3: "Phenomenon"_

If there's anything that sucks more than Mondays, it's Tuesdays.

That's not true.

Today it just _feels_ true.

Today the rain and snow have stopped, but the freezing temperatures have not. The streets are completely coated in ice. Today Charlie wakes up at dark-thirty, has to haul ass to Josh McCrae's house and wake the man up so he can open the auto parts store early to get tire chains for his daughter—which, apparently, Charlie didn't think about buying the day before, when the snow was fresh on the ground and McCrae's was still open. Then Charlie has to install the chains on Bella's truck, and because he's too much of a cheapskate to buy the EZ Fit Chain Block, the job takes him twenty minutes instead of five, and he doesn't have time to talk to Bella before he has to leave for work.

Today Bella drives on the ice for the first time in her life, and she's scared. Nobody taught her how to do this—Charlie forgot to tell her about that part, and there isn't time to Google it. She drives slowly, giving herself plenty of time to stop, and remembers those pamphlets published by Shell Oil that she had to do little reports on in Driver's Ed, in particular the one about turning into the skid if you're sliding on the ice. Fortunately, she doesn't skid even once and reaches the school parking lot unscathed.

She is being watched.

Today Edward is trying not to be a nervous wreck, which amuses Jasper to no end, though mercifully he doesn't tease Edward about it. Yesterday was the first time Edward ever had a conversation with Bella Swan, and it quite literally left him reeling. By the time school was out, he was following her around in the minds of anyone adjacent to her. And yes, that included the locker room, although he absolutely refused to admit it. Of course, he was so nervous and confused about _why_ he was doing it that even his vampire brain couldn't process everything, so by the time he understood what he was seeing, he'd seen no more than Bella's mostly bare shoulders and was left to wonder if a dark blue bra said anything specific about a girl's morals or preferences. His favorite brother was no help—he believed Edward's hang-up was pure bloodlust (Edward did not correct him) and advised him to just devour her and get it over with. Rosalie called Edward a jackass and went back to her self-directed admiration, and Alice was strangely cryptic about the whole thing instead of behaving like her usual bouncy self. Edward shunned them all in favor of a solitary hunt that night, but he was joined by his father. He had no good explanation for why he wasn't running on swift legs to Halifax or further, why he had no intention of leaving Forks. Sunrise brought no comfort, just wonder.

_I wonder if I'll be strong enough to resist her blood._

_I wonder what she'll say today._

_I wonder if she got the dog smell out of her clothes._

So today Edward is standing in the lot beside his car with his tiny sister, grateful that she can't read his mind, because he's wondering what color bra Bella is wearing today, and he's feeling ashamed about that, but not so ashamed that he's going to stop thinking about it. He's reminiscing pleasantly about a tiny, heart-shaped mole on her left shoulder, and the way it lies flush against her ice-pale skin, when he hears her truck's engine howling down the road, loud enough to drown out most Harleys. (Somewhere in the world a biker is not sure why he has a sudden urge to kick a vampire's ass. _Nothing_ drowns out a Harley-Davidson, asshole.)

Bella parks, notices the snow chains, and finds herself pressing her hand to her mouth. In all her years with her mother, Renee provided Bella with love, tolerance, and good humor, she provided creative and emotional support, she provided realistic sexual information _and_ condoms instead of Puritanical platitudes. But one thing Renee never was good at, one thing she just didn't know how to do on a practical level, was keep Bella from physical harm. That's why Bella was the one who signed up for Driver's Ed at Sears and self defense at the JCC, who generated shopping lists and installed internet security, the one who booked doctor's appointments and mammograms. Not since she was a small girl has Bella believed anyone else would take care of her, not this way. This is not hugs and camaraderie, this is not therapeutic shopping because the boy she had a crush on called her a butt-sniffer or a buck-toothed nerd. This is Charlie's quiet way of saying, "I love you, and I want to keep you safe."

Edward finds Bella's emotional reaction fascinating because he doesn't understand why it's there, what brought it on, if she's crazy, what it all means. But he wants to. So today he's finally going to move forward. He's going to talk to this girl out here in the open air, where there's less risk, and solve at least one of her mysteries.

Today sucks because Tyler Crowley got really bored an hour before school and decided to toke up.

Usually Tyler smokes one joint and stays high for half an hour, forty minutes tops. That's the benefit of smoking lousy weed—the effects don't last long enough to incapacitate you for the rest of the day. But Tyler spent part of his Christmas break in Canada with cousins who had excellent suppliers. At twenty-five bucks per gram, Strawberry Cough is renowned for its medicinal properties, its anti-anxiety effects, and its long-lasting euphoria.

Edward has one extra second of warning, provided by a terrified Alice. One extra second to look across the lot directly into Bella Swan's eyes as she hears the van swerving on the ice and careening toward her. One second, and it is clear: Bella knows she is about to die.

Well, that shit ain't happening.

Lightning quick and invisible, Edward crosses the parking lot, yanks Bella out of the way, shoves and half-juggles a friggin' _van_ (which, by the way, nobody notices _at all,_ because apparently Forks High School is populated entirely by the legally blind). He protects her spine, her legs, everything except her head, which bumps against the asphalt with a loud _crack _and terrifies him in a way he never thought possible.

Even more terrifying, though he won't realize it until later, is how perfectly she fits in his arms, how he instinctively knows the best way to cradle her, even though he's never held a woman this way in all his long life.

For now, he's trying to ignore all but the most relevant ambient thoughts. The van's driver is confused, bleeding his warm but tainted blood…and he's officially never going to smoke marijuana again for as long as he lives. Three students and a teacher are craning their necks hoping to see blood, the damn rubberneckers. (Never mind that were Edward a different kind a vampire, he'd be thinking the same thing.) Jessica is the first to reach for her phone and dial nine-one-one—Edward will never say a harsh word about her again. His brothers and sisters could care less about the girl; they are unhappy with Edward (Rosalie can't seem to think of anything except the word 'dumbass'), their primary concern being what they'll have to do to avoid exposure, or even suspicion, because they're all as self-centered as your average two-year-old. Yes, these are the sons and daughters of a dedicated physician. You'd think at least _one_ of them would realize that none of them would have been able to resist an impromptu blood buffet, well-fed or not. How's that for exposure?

"Edward?" a dazed voice reaches him from below. All other thoughts vanish.

"Bella, are you all right?"

_Am I all right?_ Bella takes a moment or two to consider this question. She's cold, she's on the ground, there's a dull throb somewhere on the back of her head, someone's van just hit her truck, and she's pretty sure she just ruined her one and only heavy coat. She's also being held like she's precious cargo, and is about two inches away from being kissed. By the guy who smells like women's body spray. And…some kind of pungent animal?

"This is the second weirdest day of my life," she sighs.

Edward smiles, but it's a worried smile, because he's afraid she's concussed. He carefully touches the back of her skull, feeling for the telltale lump. Yes, there it is. But thank whatever gods are paying attention today, there's no blood. "Don't move. You're hurt."

"Wait a minute," she stops him, "how'd you get over here so fast."

Edward almost drops her on the tarmac again. "I was standing right behind you."

"No you weren't."

"Yes, I was."

"Were not."

"Was, too."

"Were not! I saw you!"

"Did not."

"Did, too."

"No, you _didn't_ see me. That's the whole point."

She glances to her right, then her left, then around Edward's head. "There's a dent in the car next to us shaped exactly like your shoulder, and another one embedded in the van behind you. I believe they're making a different point entirely."

_Shit._ By now the sirens are announcing the paramedics' arrival, which means Chief Swan won't be far behind. "Bella, _please._ I was standing right behind you. Understand?"

"Why?"

"Just…please."

Bella hears her dad's voice approaching, and she can smell the driver's blood. It's making her nauseous, which won't end well if she doesn't shut up and hold herself together. She's not sure how her father will react to this situation, if he'll overreact like Renee does, but she'd rather keep the embarrassment to a minimum. Vomit won't help the cause. "Fine. But you owe me, Cullen."

She doesn't understand the face he makes when he answers, "Fine," and sets her down. Why is he backing away and looking at her like day-old garbage when two seconds ago he looked like he was ready to make out?

Charlie didn't get to be chief of police because he panics in a crisis. He's barking out orders, supervising the removal of Tyler's van, ordering a blood test for the suspiciously-scented Tyler, taking Edward _very_ seriously when he indicates Bella has a possible concussion (_traitor,_ she seethes inwardly), and generally impressing most of the female bystanders with his authority and manliness. Rosalie will never admit it, but even she's feeling hot and bothered. (What? She may be undead, but she's not _dead_ dead.)

Bella doesn't know it, but while she's riding on a gurney in the back of the ambulance, Edward's riding in the front seat. She'd probably be more aware of it (and irritated by it) if these damn weirdo EMTs didn't have a brace around her neck and an unnecessary oxygen mask over her face. A bump on the head, people. A simple bump on the back of the head does not inhibit a girl's breathing. She should know—this isn't her first goose egg.

When she attempts to mention this to the EMT, he smiles. "Gotta take extra good care of _you_. Your dad scares the crap out of me."

"Who, Charlie? No way," she laughs. To her, Charlie's firm but fair, not outwardly emotional but still a big softie. That's because she normally only sees him for two weeks or so out of the year, and only during his downtime. When it comes to work, the man's a total hardass. Charlie is going to ask questions and demand answers, to say nothing of tearing Tyler a new asshole.

Edward knows this. He knows he should be worried about witnesses and investigations and the goddamn nosy Vampire Gestapo finding out about this (from six thousand miles away, no less). Instead he hightails it to Carlisle the minute he steps foot through the hospital doors, looking for all the world like a panicked twelve-year-old boy who just saw a hairy cantaloupe poking out of a pregnant lady's special place.

Bella is just fine. Of course she's fine; we're only in chapter three of the book. Everybody knows that the protagonist isn't going to go through something permanently scarring and/or lethal in chapter _three._ Either she goes through it in the first chapter, so the rest of the story can be about overcoming the challenges caused by the accident, or she goes through it in the climax, so the audience can be all worried about her.

Unfortunately, the characters don't know that, so they're needlessly worried. Bella gets it, really. It's a miracle she survived, and she knows it, so it's understandable that people are freaking out a little and that Tyler is babbling nonsense excuses about driving too fast and hitting the ice wrong (even though she can smell the real reason just fine). What she doesn't understand is why her father is not in the ER with her. She doesn't _need_ him there, but when she gets back from radiology and he's still not there, it bugs her. Usually Renee is underfoot and in the way whenever Bella makes a trip to a hospital.

It's not Charlie's fault; he had to deal with Tyler's parents, who don't know whether to be more upset about the van being totaled or the fact that their son is going to be placed under arrest for a DUI. The district attorney (number five on Charlie's speed dial) is _happy_ to prosecute this case. Charlie desperately wants to go to his daughter's side, but they don't allow cellular phones in the emergency room, not even the chief's work-only cell-phone, so he has to use the Waiting Room payphone to call his ex-wife. Renee won't stop crying his damned ear off about 'my baby, my baby' long enough for him to get a word in edgewise.

It is as Bella's feigning sleep so that she can ignore Tyler's renewed apologies (all the more strenuous now that he's been cuffed to the handrails of his bed) that she hears the familiar sound—when did it become familiar?—of Edward Cullen's voice.

"Is she sleeping?"

"Hardly," she quips, opening her eyes and noting his smile, his suave expression. Something about the way he's looking at her makes her want to slap him. "I know better than to go to sleep when I've sustained a head injury."

"Oh," Edward says uncomfortably, feeling a little guilty and a lot foolish. No one can throw him off his game quite like Bella can. "Right. How—?"

"Edward," Tyler interrupts him, "I'm sorry man, I—"

"Don't speak," Edward hisses, furious with this idiot for all the havoc he's caused. "You almost killed someone today." To Bella, he turns and tries again. "So what's the verdict?"

"No one in this hellhole will tell me anything," Bella complains. She isn't usually this much of a brat, but she's been here for over two hours and has yet to see an actual doctor. That kind of thing is normal in the densely populated Phoenix, where plenty of hospitals are filled to capacity, but there are _no other patients_ in this ER at the moment. If she actually had a cracked skull, she'd be dead by now from swelling around the brain. "Isn't your dad supposed to be a doctor? Can't you get him in here or something? Please?"

Edward meant to say something smooth, like 'It's all about who you know. But don't worry, I came to spring you.' He even timed it perfectly so that Carlisle would walk in right after he said it. Instead he has now missed his cue, and it is Bella who announces Carlisle's arrival.

And sweet mercy, what an arrival! After three-and-a-half centuries, Carlisle Cullen has perfected the art of walking into a room. Bella notices everything in exactly the order he wants her to: the length of his stride (black slacks stand out beneath his white coat), then his blonde hair and wide shoulders (achieved by keeping his head lowered toward the silver clipboard in his hands), and finally his gorgeous (if too pale) face and billionaire smile as he looks up from her chart. He can even do it in slow motion.

He is mildly surprised when Bella does not swoon.

It's not that she doesn't know a handsome man when she sees one, but by now Bella is pissed. Not only has she been kept waiting too long, she was almost crushed by a stoner who has been allowed to converse with her, she knows she's perfectly fine but no one will discharge her, and even though she's as grown and independent as a seventeen-year-old can be, she would still like to see her dad, if for no other reason than the fact that she's a minor, and no one will give her so much as a milligram of ibuprofen without parental consent. And how lame is it that these Cullens ooze seduction every time they want to shut people up or get something they want? Bella always hated people who acted that way back in Phoenix, and she _really_ hates it right now.

"Dr. Cullen, I presume?"

"Miss Swan," he answers, trying to turn up the debonair charm. "How are you feeling?"

"Annoyed," she says honestly. She knows better than to get in a snit with her health care professional, but at this point she doesn't give a damn. "I'm also nauseated, but that's because I can smell Puff the Magic Bleeding Dragon over there," she indicates Tyler with a hooked thumb. "How do my x-rays look?"

"They look fine." Carlisle smiles again, though it's looking a little more desperate. He puts the film up on the lightboard and indicates the area where the bump should be. "No concussion, no major trauma. The nausea worries me, though. Does your head hurt? Edward said you hit it pretty hard."

_Yeah, I'll bet he did,_ Bella grumbles internally. "Look, obviously you're not the ER doc—you're in a suit, not scrubs. So none of this is your fault, but you're here now, so I'll tell you: something is wrong with this place. If anyone thought my injury was even remotely serious, there should have been a doctor in here a lot sooner. Someone's been in here to cuff Tyler to his bed, but not to stitch him up or change his bandages. Is his blood even clotting? Has anyone bothered to check? Where's the ER doctor, out golfing in the snow? And while we're at it, why is your son still in here during my exam? Don't you have rules about privacy or _confidentiality?_" She shoots a hard look at Edward at the end of that sentence, a reminder: _I haven't forgotten anything, Cullen._ Edward may not be able to read her mind, but for once, he understands her meaning.

Carlisle, deeply embarrassed by his hospital's state of neglect, stops trying to look sexy and apologizes for his absent colleague. Dr. Stevens, who is _supposed_ to be on duty, is not snow-golfing, nor is he having a two-hour breakfast. He's making a house call. At a motel. With a young co-ed who is most definitely neither his patient nor his wife. Proving once again that small towns are every bit as depraved as big cities.

Dr. Cullen gives Bella a few aftercare instructions and signs her release. Remembering her manners (finally), she thanks him for seeing her, grabs the paperwork, and follows Edward out of the room.

Edward doesn't want to be followed. This much is obvious. Bella, however, doesn't care. "Slow down, Speed Racer," she calls after him. "You rushing off to save more hapless females from certain death?" It's just a joke, but she isn't wrong; Edward _is_ trying to save someone. Her. From himself. She smells _so_ good…

When he turns around his eyes are not angry, but he looks at her like he's looking at a desk or a bug—not worth his time. "What do you want?" _Go away. Please._

Bella's not shocked by his reaction; actually, it seems fair. "Sorry I was so abrasive before. Hospitals make me cranky." Coincidentally, they have the exact same effect on Edward, and for almost the exact same reason: the smell. "Thank you for getting your dad for me."

"Sure." Edward waits a beat. "So if that's all—?"

"It's not."

He folds his arms and begins impatiently tapping his fingers.

"How'd you do it?" she asks.

"Do what?"

"This isn't an episode of _Smallville_, Cullen. You don't have to go to ridiculous lengths to convince me I didn't see what I saw, and I'm not going to publicize your secret identity. Just tell me how you stopped the van." She really hopes he doesn't say adrenaline—she would have smelled that in his sweat. If he had any.

"You're very direct, aren't you?" Edward deflects. "Do you ever let up?"

Bella folds her own arms, lifting a curious eyebrow. The other eyebrow remains indifferent. "Actually, most of that was sarcasm. You don't really _have_ a secret identity, do you?"

"If I did," Edward frowns (a rare mistake—he really should smile), "that would be…a secret."

"Okay, smartass," Bella grins wryly, filing away his frown for future contemplation. "The van."

"Didn't happen. You're confused." If only Jedi mind tricks actually worked that way. Or at all.

"I'm not blind or stupid. You crossed the parking lot in half a second and stopped a minivan with your _hand._ Not even _two_ hands, just one."

"Nobody will believe that nonsense," Edward insists.

"Do you ever listen? I have no intention of telling the world you're an albino Clark Kent." She reaches out and almost touches his arm, but stops short when his body stiffens. "I promise."

She sounds like she means it, but Edward has no way of knowing that for certain, so he has no choice but to cast aspersions on her reliability. "I'm going to ignore the albino remark, because you hit your head and you're nauseous. Clearly you were hallucinating." He flashes her with his most condescending smile. "I didn't stop the van, your behemoth truck did. Now run along to your daddy, little girl. I have better things to do than waste the rest of my day with you."

Bella just looks at him, not mad (at least not yet), but disappointed. Clark Kent may be firm about his denial, but he's not rude about it. But Clark Kent is a kindly alien from a comic book, and Edward Cullen is…something else. "Then I guess I'll go thank my truck for saving my life, since you don't give a shit."

"I really don't," he lies. It kills him to do it—Bella's not as good as she'd like to be at hiding hurt feelings.

"I see." Her hand is still outstretched, as if she's offering him something instead of asking for something. "Then why pull me out of the way?"

Edward's face softens, and he gives her an honest answer at last. "I don't know."

Bella retracts her hand, clinging to her own arm instead. Neither of them has been on their best behavior today, and she can't say she knows the full measure of Edward Cullen, but she _is_ smart enough to know that even if he doesn't like her, he didn't hesitate to save her. "Even a good man sees evil days," she tells him softly, and then she's gone.

Today sucks because Charlie won't take his eyes off Bella from the minute she greets him in the waiting room (she has to sift through a crowd of class-ditchers and concerned acquaintances in the waiting area before she can find him, and he's _still _on the phone with Renee, who won't stop her hysterics but isn't exactly booking the next flight to Washington, either). Nor will Charlie allow his child to cook those chicken fajitas she wanted to make, because he's terrified she'll faint and land face first in a pan of hot grease—she's tempted fate enough for one day, he tells her, but really it's because he feels guilty for not being with her in the ER. So basically Bella's stuck in the living room eating pineapple pizza and working on Penny Press logic puzzles while Charlie pretends he's not hovering (because everyone knows cool dads don't hover, and clearly this is a man who cares about being cool). Really Bella would rather just lock herself in her room, turn on some music, pull Silicone Freddy Prinze Jr. out from its secret hiding place (What? She can't like older men? Don't be so ageist.), and do one thing that she _knows_ will feel good after a truly awful day. Just as well that she doesn't try, though—the phone won't stop ringing, and most of the calls are from the same person.

A significant portion of what should be recovery time has to be spent on the phone reassuring Renee, who believes worry equals action. This is because whenever Renee worries hard enough about something she doesn't think she can handle alone, somebody (usually Bella) makes whatever she's worried about work out. Renee also seems to think the best option right now is for Bella to leave Forks after one week of residence and come live with her in a fleabag motel in south Florida, where there is no ice on the streets. Just hurricanes from June through November, not that Renee's thought of this yet. Bella amazes her mother by opting to remain in Washington, where the roads may be icy and the boys may be douchebags, but at least she has a home, a sense of stability, and a chance at a decent education. She may have to share a bathroom with Charlie, but here she doesn't also have to share a bedroom and a single-burner hotplate with her mother and Phil and attend a ghetto Floridian school district. Bella doesn't tell her mother about the strange circumstances of her rescue, only that someone pulled her out of harm's way. She'll never tell anyone; she gave her word. It takes forever for Bella to fall asleep even with three Tylenol, and Edward stars in her dreams. Dressed in blue tights and a red cape.

Today sucks because Edward has a knock-down, drag-out fight with his family after school, most of which are in favor of ending an innocent girl's life just so they won't have to move to another town (never mind that they move to new towns all the time, and have uprooting down to an exact science by now). Even his mother doesn't care what happens to the girl, so long as _he_ remains—very maternal of her. The outcome of the discussion disturbs Edward, especially Alice's wavering visions of a life no longer solitary. Now he is running, trying to escape the looks from his family, their pity and confusion, their shock and sadness and judgment. He sprints, climbs, jumps, falls, ploughs through the wilderness until he reaches water. He even contemplates spending the rest of his existence at the bottom of Puget Sound where he'll never have to smell anything again, but he can't escape. If he _could_ sleep, he still wouldn't be able to—his mind fixates on Bella's parting words all night long. She was quoting the Buddha, but it feels more like she's issued a dare: _be a good man, for me._

Today sucks because behind all the stress of too much unwanted attention, nearly dying, that terrible excuse for a hospital, being forced to smell Tyler's blood for so long, and Edward being an asshole, Bella doesn't hear the message Edward can't say with words, the one even he doesn't seem to realize is there. The message was conveyed in stone hands and a dented van, in the way he rushed for a doctor with well over two hundred years of practical experience, in his impatience to the point of crushing a marble paperweight to dust when Carlisle refused to attract further attention by flying down to the ER, and in the threat Edward issued against his own flaxen-haired brother and sister for Bella's sake ("You even think about laying a finger on that girl, and I'll chop off your hands, set fire to them, and shove them up your own asses.").

It all adds up to Edward's message for Bella, for her alone, only this time she can't hear it:

_I love you, and I want to keep you safe._


	6. Family Feud

_Today's chapter is less humor, more darkness. Again, I like it anyway._

_

* * *

_

_Previously: Bella + Edward + Tyler on weed + hospital = awkward confrontation._

_From Midnight Sun Chapter 4: "Visions"_

_Even a good man sees evil days…_

Edward heard this in his mind, like an echo chamber. It was there when he went back to school after leaving Bella at the hospital. Naturally his teachers wanted him to answer questions about the accident. Rosalie was expecting him to say that Bella hit her head and was hallucinating, not that she knew much about Bella's actual condition. It was damage control, standard procedure after potential exposure like this. Subterfuge and sabotage. The least reliable witness is the eye witness, and it was Edward's job to make sure everyone knew it.

However…

"Do you have any idea how Tyler Crowley and Bella Swan are?" Mr. Banner asked. His concern was so uncharacteristic that even if Edward weren't a mind reader, he'd have known it was false. "I heard there were some injuries…"

"I wouldn't know," Edward shrugged, glaring Bob Banner into submission. (Most people can only either shrug or glare successfully, but doing both at once rarely scares anyone. The fact that Edward pulled it off indicated his devotion, both to Bella, which he wouldn't admit, and to the fine art of glaring.)

Mr. Banner's little fantasies of having two less students to deal with in the future were quickly replaced by the cold dread of being axe-murdered by disgruntled teenagers in his sleep. Whoever found his body would undoubtedly find his Disney _Beauty and the Bestiality_ stash, and his mother would be disgraced while his ex-wife would crow to whoever would listen that he'd always been a freak who demanded degrading things from her, which was categorically untrue. He didn't discover animated pornography until long after the divorce, and sex with Marcy had always been straight and boring, but that wouldn't stop her from soiling his reputation and giving his mother angina. So it was probably wise not to piss the Cullen boy off too much, just in case.

"Take your seat, please, Mr. Cullen," Bob said politely.

It was the wrong thing to do, not maligning Bella's potential testimony, but Edward couldn't make himself go through with it. She was rude at the hospital, but so was he, and it was perfectly natural for her to be curious about what she saw. Should she be slandered for that?

"Of course she should!" Rosalie said when he posed the question between classes. She cornered him when she overheard his conversation with Banner and found it lacking. Proof positive that no good deed goes unpunished. "This isn't the time to be a chivalrous gentleman, you moron. You screwed up, you're in a position to run interference, and you're not doing anything you should be doing to deal with the problem."

"What's it going to accomplish, Rosalie?" Edward demanded. "If I say she was hallucinating, don't you think it's going to spawn _more_ interest in whatever she has to say? When she walks back into school and her friends and teachers are all telling her _I said_ she was seeing things, when normally I don't talk to anyone at all, let alone spread gossip, do you really think that's going to inspire her _not _to say anything about me or what happened?"

Rose had no answer, but Edward didn't like the malicious tone to her thoughts as she stalked off.

_Oh, yeah,_ Emmett thought at him in Spanish class, _by the way, Rose and Jasper are totally gonna off the girl later._

One reactionary panic attack later, Emmett and Edward were hiding between classroom buildings. Emmett, still casual as ever, was trying to have a rational conversation about it.

"You have to admit, the girl's a security risk."

"Don't you think letting your wife and your brother _kill_ her is a greater risk?"

Emmett had already considered this. Which was why he had already convinced Jasper and Rose to wait for a family meeting before they killed anyone. And yes, that was exactly how he phrased it. Fortunately "Mom and Dad" were home when the kids got home from school, so they could all sit down and discuss homicide together calmly and reasonably. Esme viewed the proceedings with extra apprehension—there were already stress cracks in the dining room table from the last family meeting. And you thought your family was bad.

"This is my fault," Edward began, trying to sound mature. "I'm sorry I acted so hastily, but I can't say I regret saving her life."

"I knew it," Rosalie groused. "You're going to bitch and moan and act all depressed, like always, but when it comes to actually taking care of the problem, you're going to make us deal with it, like _always_." Nothing says mature, adult discussion like immediate blame and hyperbole that curves so much it's a blatant lie.

"What 'always?' What the hell are you talking about?" Edward said, frustrated that rationality was out the window so quickly. "I'm not the one who keeps accidentally feeding on people or bringing trouble to our house, so you can point your 'always' at someone else, _Rosalie_. The last time we were in danger of exposure was when Maria came to Calgary for a visit, which first of all, was not my fault, because I wasn't the jackass who told her how to find us, and second, we resolved it by leaving the area." That wasn't precisely true; they didn't _resolve_ the situation so much as escape suspicion, but that didn't stop Maria from killing four cancer patients and a cardiac patient housed in a hospice. She didn't like the one with kidney failure—the excess fluid in his body made his blood taste too salty.

"So are you trying to say _this_ isn't your fault?" Rose demanded. "Because I didn't see anyone else making a spectacle of themselves today. Just you."

"I'm saying I'll leave." Something in Edward rebelled at the idea, but he ignored the feeling as best he could. "If I'm not here for the girl to scrutinize—"

"Absolutely not," Esme insisted. "Your place is here." She had missed her son terribly during his one-week absence, much more than was proportionate to the length of time he'd been away. Even if it was only temporary, even if she could call him on the phone every single day, even if she could have daily internet video conferences with him, the thought of him gone tore her up inside. Edward could hear this. He knew exactly what her family meant to her, which is to say, more than the life of a 17-year-old girl who never hurt anyone. It bothered Edward that Carlisle didn't realize that about his own wife.

"Well I'm certainly not going to let my sister 'take care of it' like some Mafia hitman, Esme," he replied, responding both to Rosalie's plan and Esme's silent support of this plan. Esme averted her eyes but did not move, lest she attract Carlisle's attention.

"Leaving won't solve anything," Emmett said. "We need you. You're the mind-reader. You're the one who'll know the word on the street about us."

"Try not to sound like such a cheesy cop show," Edward retorted. _And they call me the theatrical one._

"He's not wrong," Esme countered. "And if you leave, the girl will get suspicious."

"That doesn't mean she'll be able to _do_ anything about it," Edward said. "This is the twenty-first century. Nobody in this country believes in immortals anymore, vampire or otherwise. Even Anne Rice got bored with us."

"The girl doesn't have to think you're a vampire or an immortal," Rosalie argued—she _hated_ Anne Rice, who was largely regarded among their kind as the Madonna (circa the Blonde Ambition Tour) of the vampire world. "She just has to think you're different, which I understand is already the case, 'albino Clark Kent.'"

Edward cast a sidelong glance at his father. Carlisle shrugged, remembering the text message he sent to his family members. "I thought it was funny."

"Except that it isn't." Rosalie sighed. "It's a problem."

"Why are we even having a debate about this?" Edward asked. "What is the benefit in killing an innocent girl?"

"I should think that's obvious," Rose answered. "The benefit is that she doesn't get to tell anyone what she saw. It's nothing personal."

Edward snorted. "Nothing personal, my ass. It's her _life._ There's nothing more personal than that."

"Don't give me that look," Rose said. "You can't get around the truth with humor or rhetoric or picking our brains. The girl saw too much, and eventually she'll talk."

"She was discharged hours ago," Emmett reminded his wife. "And I guarantee her friends have already started calling to check on her now that school's out. If she's got anything to say, it's too late to stop her from saying it."

"I don't believe she will," Edward said immediately, though he wasn't half as sure as he tried to sound. "She knows what it would look like to people. I made sure of that when I spoke to her." And he hated himself for it, but better that than what his sister had in store.

"You have no way knowing what she'll say, or when, or to whom." Rosalie wasn't willing to buy into any of Bella Swan's assurances of silence—few humans ever kept another's secrets as well as their own. "I'm not hearing any viable solutions other than mine. We can't afford to let rumors circulate."

"Well we can't just kill her _and_ everyone she's already spoken to," Esme said sensibly. It was perhaps the first sensible thought she'd had all evening. Rosalie's persistence was starting to worry her. "A body count would only attract attention, and not just from the humans."

"Then we can all leave," Edward offered. Though this thought was just as painful as going away by himself, it had the benefit of keeping the rest of the family where he could see them. "Heaven knows I've had to do it over and over again for the lot of you."

"I don't _want_ to leave," Rosalie complained, restraining herself from stamping her feet, but just barely. "I like it _here_. We almost get to be normal, and we're nearly done with high school." Evidently it had not occurred to Rosalie that normal human beings didn't have conversations quite like this one. Or marry their brothers.

"We don't have to start over from scratch," Carlisle pointed out. "We can easily relocate to Portland with our current identities. It's not a cross-country move, and there are more universities there. If we stay in Forks, you'll have to either 'go away' to a decent university or enroll here, and you know how you hate community college. Honestly, I don't know what we were thinking moving to a tiny town in the first place." Actually, what he had been thinking was that Rosalie had yet to complete a college degree since 1993, because no matter where the family settled down or how long they stayed, she was always taking one trip or another to a new country, and not two-week vacations, either. Her nomadic behavior was inconsistent with her claims of a desire for a settled life, so Carlisle had given up on trying to please her and just tried to find a place with a hospital in need, access to forested areas, and plenty of cloud cover.

But his daughter didn't see it that way.

"You were thinking of _him,_" Rosalie fumed, glaring daggers at Edward. "Him and his burden of mind-reading, and how _hard_ it is for him to hear so many thoughts. 'Edward, Edward, Edward.' Everything you do is always for him. What about me, Carlisle? Doesn't what I want matter at all?"

"Rose…" Emmett warned her. He loved his wife, but she was forever taking things too far, and she was slow to listen when he tried to temper her.

"Is this Jan Brady crap for real?" Edward squawked—he'd have been laughing if the situation weren't so serious. "What's next? 'Mom loves you best?'"

_Well she does,_ Rosalie didn't say. What's more, she wasn't wrong.

"Do you even hear yourself?" Edward asked. "You just went from complaining about our secret being compromised, to whining that you want to pull out of a potentially compromised location, to blaming all our problems _and_ our residence on parental favoritism. You don't think any solution to _any_ problem is viable unless you come up with it. Is there something wrong with your brain?"

"I might ask you the same question," she hissed. "You think running away is going to change what that human saw, but it won't. It is what it is. You broke the rules, not me, so you can't complain."

"I most certainly can!"

"Rosie," Emmett tried again.

"The girl dies, Edward."

"Why?" he demanded. "Because you don't want to have your car shipped to Oregon? Because you can't get enough of _these_ local human boys staring at your ass? Is that really worth killing for?"

"Don't start your judgmental garbage with me," Rosalie nagged. She was a veteran nag. She had taken the trophy in the Husband Calling Contest at the Illinois State Fair three years in a row. "Yes, I like admiration and the paint job on my M3, but that's completely beside the point."

"No," Edward pounded his fist on the table, only just remembering not to exert enough force to completely destroy the wood, "that is _exactly_ the point. You've never once fed on a human in almost eighty years, and suddenly you're ready to make this one a midnight snack because you don't want to be inconvenienced? I am begging you to see reason."

"You really are pathetic and foolish," Rosalie sneered, even as the crack in the wood grew under Edward's fist. "I'm not going to _eat_ her. She already has a head injury—I can make it look related. What do you take me for?"

For one moment, all Edward could see was the hurt in Bella's face in the hospital hallway. _Why pull me out of the way?_

"We're supposed to be good people, you heartless shrew!" Edward roared. "How far are you willing to go? If she talks and the humans think she's hallucinating, are you going to kill them anyway? If her neighbor's kids look out the window and see you sneaking in and out of her bedroom, are you going to slaughter them, too? Don't you have a conscience at all?" But Rosalie didn't even acknowledge his outburst.

"Baby, maybe we should rethink this," Emmett said uncomfortably, his own conscience _finally_ putting in an appearance. "You can't just kill the police chief's healthy daughter within twenty-four hours of a prior near-death and expect him not to order an autopsy."

"Carlisle would be the one to perform it," Rosalie grinned.

And that grin was her mistake.

"Enough," Carlisle groaned. Technically he couldn't get a headache, but that didn't stop him from massaging his temple as if he did. _Goddamn teenagers._ "I've been waiting all afternoon for you to come to your senses, Rosalie, but it's clear that you're unable. You will stand down, and you will do it now."

"Carlisle," she replied, uncertain and growing nervous. She could tell—she could always tell—when Edward was trying not to smile, whether it was in victory or, in this case, relief. "It'll work."

"It wouldn't," Carlisle assured her. "Even if I was willing to go along with your…_plan_, I'm the one who examined her x-rays and told her there wasn't any major damage. It's my signature on her discharge sheet, no one else's, and at the end of the day I'm the one who will be held accountable. At the very least Charlie Swan will suspect medical malpractice, and that's if he isn't automatically concerned about foul play. Either way, he'll call in the county medical examiner, not me. Then I'll come under scrutiny, and so will the rest of us when they do a thorough background check and realize everything from my birth certificate to my driver's license to my medical degree are all high-quality forgeries. That will end your privileged life rather quickly, don't you think?"

"We can't just leave witnesses," Rosalie tried. "The Volturi—"

"Are not here," Carlisle spoke over her. "But _I_ am, and I refuse to allow my family to commit premeditated murder."

"Since when?" Rosalie challenged him, shaking off the restraining hand Emmett placed on her shoulder. "You've allowed it before."

Carlisle made the barest suggestion of a growl. It was enough to silence any further protest—he _never_ growled. Rosalie had forgotten he was even capable of it. "Bella Swan is not a rapist, and she has not wronged you. You're not trying to exact justice; you're trying to justify the cold-blooded killing of a _child_. You, the same young woman who cried for two days when I told you you'd never have children of your own, who went on the warpath because a group of men assaulted you and left you for dead. I don't know who you are right now, but it's not the person who's been funding women's shelters for the last sixty years in an attempt to reclaim her lost humanity." The look he gave her bordered on disgust. "I don't know why you suddenly don't care about that anymore, but if this…_thing_ you're acting like is what you want to be, I suggest you go upstairs, pack your suitcase, and get the hell out of my house. You're not currently under suspicion, so nobody in this town will give a damn if _you_ leave."

"Carlisle—" Esme tried.

"No, Esme. She's gone too far," he cut her off. With a glance at Edward, he added, "If it hadn't been for the Swan girl mentioning it, Tyler Crowley probably would have bled out and died today. It turns out he has a vitamin K deficiency I didn't know about. A girl who shows concern for the man who nearly killed her is worth saving. I'd like it very much if our family could continue to be worth saving, too."

Rosalie lowered her eyes and relaxed the fists she'd held clenched—in this way, Carlisle knew she would obey.

Jasper, however, was another matter. As a lifelong pragmatist, he didn't particularly care about Carlisle's bizarre morals, Bella's goodness, sibling rivalry, or living a life of luxury. Certainly, he didn't have a personal grudge against Bella the way Rosalie seemed to—Bella's status as a person wasn't part of his equation. He didn't care about whether anyone thought _he_ was a good man, or the last vestiges of his humanity, at least not today. He cared about one thing, and that was protecting his mate from potential danger, whether it came in the form of merciless Volturi enforcers or humans with pitchforks.

"Jasper…" Edward warned. "You heard Carlisle."

"You gave no thought to the rest of us when you took unilateral action this morning," Jasper said simply. He usually played along with the family dynamic because it made Alice happy and because he genuinely liked these people most of the time. But the 'my house, my rules' argument didn't work on him; unlike his siblings, Jasper didn't have daddy issues that overruled his sense of autonomy, and everyone, especially Carlisle, knew it. Jasper was once a commander of men, then of vampires; he wasn't in the habit of blindly obeying illogical orders. Backing Edward felt like a short-sighted course of action and he wasn't going to do it. "Because of you, that human has probably already told her cop father everything, and he probably knows his daughter well enough to be sure when she's being serious. By morning he'll have more than a few questions he'd like answers to, and that puts Alice in danger, whether we leave this place or not. I for one think it would be prudent to kill both of the Swans. It shouldn't be hard to cut a brake-line when they'll be traveling together and frame someone else for it. Chief Swan's bound to have human enemies—he's made a number of drug busts recently, including today's."

Rosalie kept still, but Edward could sense her glimmer of hope at Jasper's no muss, no fuss approach. So he suggested, in no uncertain terms, that if either one of them so much as daydreamed about making an attempt on the Swan girl's life (he meant to include her father, but he wasn't thinking of Charlie), that he'd mutilate them in ways that weren't anatomically possible.

Jasper found this hilarious—wrestling matches aside, he thought Edward was weak. "You'd have to be her twenty-four hour bodyguard to pull that off," he laughed. "You can probably protect her from me for a little while, but eventually you'll have to leave to protect her from yourself."

"Or," Alice spoke for the first time, "he would just need some help from me."

Startled, Jasper looked to his wife, waiting. With Alice, it was always best to wait for some elaboration.

"If you try to kill her, I'll just tell Edward in advance, and he'll stop you," she explained. _Stop him,_ she admonished Edward silently, _not hurt him._ "And if you succeed in killing her, then I'll leave you forever."

"Alice," Jasper said slowly, bewildered by her emotions. She was perfectly serious, and Alice was not the kind of immortal who dealt in absolutes, not with a gift like hers that proved how the world, and people, were always changing as time inevitably passed by.

"I love you for wanting to protect me. I love you, period," she told him. "But the thing is, I'm going to love her, too." With a pointed look at Edward (he seemed to be getting a lot of those today), she said, "And so are you."

"WHAT?" everyone shouted simultaneously.

"That's preposterous," Edward denied.

Alice showed him one vision. Just one, hazy and distant, but it was all he needed: Bella holding Edward's hands in her own, looking up at him, smiles on both their faces, mutual trust and adoration.

"Oh, god." If he could, Edward would have been sick. Not because he found the idea repulsive, but because he _didn't,_ and it frightened him that he could feel that way at all, let alone about _Bella._ And before anyone gets all insulted on Bella's behalf, let's remember that we're talking about someone with no memory of puberty.

"She's _human_," Rosalie said emphatically. "And _ugly._"

"You're so transparent," Alice said cattily. "Jealous, much?"

"Jealous? Try incredulous," Rosalie laughed (a little too forcefully). "She's a puny mortal with beady eyes and stringy hair. Oh, and let's not forget the part where she's a worthless _human. _Why would Edward love _that?_"

"I was human when you found me," Emmett said quietly, "and I'd just been maimed by a bear, so you can't say I was particularly good-looking or worth anything."

"That's different," Rose insisted. She wasn't so much bothered by the memory as she as by the mournful tone with which Emmett brought it up. Because in addition to being insensitive, she was also _clueless._

"I was human when Carlisle found me, too" Esme piped up. The girl she'd been so willing to see killed an hour ago was suddenly a beacon of hope, to be protected and defended. "And I'm sure I didn't look like much."

"Yes, but…you were dying," Edward reminded her, and everyone. "Bella's not dying."

"She could be," Emmett said thoughtfully, his eyes on Jasper, who was still staring at Alice.

"But she's _not,_" Edward stressed, grinding his fist into the tabletop. The stress cracks grew by several more inches. "Jesus Kickboxing Christ, and you people accuse _me_ of putting us all at risk."

"I'm not making it up, Edward," Alice said. "She's going to be my best friend." Silence momentarily enshrouded the room as everyone except Alice paused to reflect on what that poor mortal girl would be subjected to as Alice's Best Friend.

_I say we perform a mercy killing,_ Rosalie grumbled internally, though it was an empty threat at worst. "We don't even _make_ friends with humans," she said aloud.

"I do," Carlisle reminded her. "At work. All the time. When you work eighteen hour shifts with people, it's impossible not to."

"So do I," Esme trilled immediately. "Whenever we live someplace where I have a job or an apprenticeship, I make human friends."

"Not with people who've seen you toss a van like it's a bean bag," Jasper argued. "And you certainly don't bring them home for dinner."

"Son, if Bella was going to talk, don't you think Alice would have said something by now?"

"Well we can't just do nothing," Emmett crowed over the growing din. "It doesn't solve our problem."

"Nobody's saying 'do nothing—'" Carlisle shouted back, and then everyone was full-on yelling.

"That's _exactly_ what you're saying!"

"What if she's his mate? We can't just leave her, or kill her!"

"You're hearing what you want to hear!"

"If anyone here should be accused of selective listening—"

_Crack!_

"Damn it! Now you've broken _another_ table!"

"That's why I keep telling you to buy your tables at Ikea!"

"Who gives a shit about the stupid table? Remember the part where the Volturi might find out about this?"

"It's not like humans have never gone crazy, made up stories about vampires, and escaped execution before."

"Please don't bring Bram Stoker into this. He wasn't crazy, he was in showbiz, and he was friends with Oscar Wilde. Nobody was _ever_ going to take his vampire sightings seriously."

"Why don't you just admit that you're taking too big a risk because you're coddling Edward?"

"Why don't _you_ just admit that you're a spoiled drama queen with no respect for anyone? I'm still waiting for an apology, young lady."

"I _am_ sorry. That you're all _stupid._"

"Hey, we're not the dumbasses falling for a human who isn't even dying. Stupid is sitting at the other end of the table."

"I'll leave," Edward said again to whoever would still listen.

"You will not," Alice ordered him while the room around them boomed with insults and rhetorical questions. "It's not even an option anymore."

"I can't just stay here and let it happen, Alice," Edward groaned, sounding wretched and loser-y. "It would ruin her life."

_You can't leave her here alone, or she won't have a life at all, ruined or otherwise, _Alice whispered into his mind. _There, do you see it? If you're gone, if there's no chance of her having a future with you, then she's just a human who knows too much. Jasper will kill her if you go, and no one else will fight him. Not even Carlisle, for all his peacock posturing. I don't want that, but I can't prevent it on my own._

The argument continued, with Rosalie pronouncing Edward mentally deficient and Emmett declaring him to be the unluckiest son of a bitch this side of the Smoky Mountains. Esme was trying to quiet everyone down, but she couldn't help thinking of Edward and his human with unrestrained glee—she hated that she was the only one who hadn't seen the girl's face yet and wondered if any of her other children would be willing to get in trouble so she'd have an excuse to make a trip to the school. For once a family discussion didn't end with a fistfight, but that didn't mean it ended well. When he was reasonably certain that no one would harm Bella, Edward took flight (the chicken) and the couples all split off not long after.

"Why didn't you back me up?" Rosalie growled at her husband. They'd gone north to Lake Pleasant, cautiously checking for humans before they stripped off their clothes and silently dove into the water.

Emmett thought carefully before he spoke. He'd made mistakes in the past, everyone knew that, but those were failures at the mastery of his own instincts, not calculated plans. While it was in his nature to get over it eventually, that didn't mean he was proud of killing people, especially not right after it happened. Rosalie was different—she'd never experienced any real regret at killing her attackers, at least not that he knew of, but she'd always prided herself on never spilling a drop of human blood, not even a taste. That was _her_ nature. Her cavalier attitude about Bella Swan's death was very likely to either a) wear off once the deed was actually done and throw her into depression, or b) change who she was entirely in a way Emmett wasn't prepared to go along with. But he couldn't just say all that to her, because if she didn't feel like someone was on her side, it would only drive her further. So instead, he said:

"You don't need me to fight your battles for you. You've always done that perfectly well on your own."

"Does that mean you disagree with me?" Rose asked, everything from the twist of her lips to the set of her shoulders making it quite clear that there was _definitely_ a wrong answer to that question. They stood chest-deep in the lake—their body density didn't allow them to float with the same natural ease as a human, so a serious conversation couldn't be conducted when they were making an extra effort to tread water.

"I wasn't aware that loving you meant I'm obligated to agree with everything you say."

"Well…no…not _obligated._"

Emmett took one of his wife's hands and studied it. "When I first saw you, I believed you were an angel. And even though I know that was just a product of my dying mind, I've always thought of you that way." He looked her square in the eyes. In the low light, they were almost ice blue. "Is that still true? Or am I still just the ignorant, worthless human dumb enough to get taken out by a bear and fall in love with a vampire?"

Meanwhile, back at the undead homestead…

"I don't see how you can feel that way," Carlisle sighed. He and Esme had retreated to their bedroom, seeking quiet and reconciliation. Contrary to what Edward thought, Carlisle wasn't unaware that his wife had been willing to sacrifice Bella Swan's life to preserve her family. However, he knew her motivation came from a place of love, not that different from Jasper's self-preservation, whereas Rosalie's came from selfishness. That's why he felt more forgiving of his wife and son.

Which was total bullshit. Self-preservation is inherently selfish, even if it _is_ instinctive. Over seventy-five years of marriage will see a wide range of rationalizations, or it will see divorce. Most vampires who believe in marriage don't believe in divorce.

"It _has _to work out," Emse answered him. She was truly the most loving person Carlisle had ever known, but her 'hopeless romantic' side sometimes got her—and everyone—into trouble. Finding Rosalie had been pure chance (though Rosalie herself refused to call it serendipitous), but it was Esme who first suggested to Carlisle that Edward would be happy if he only had a mate.

"Darling, I love your optimism, but things don't just 'work out' because you want them to." Carlisle didn't know it, but he sounded very much like Bella sometimes did when speaking to her mother. "People have to work things out with actual work."

"True," Esme conceded. "But it sounds like Alice is willing to be an ally."

This did absolutely nothing to comfort Carlisle, as Alice had been Esme's "ally" when they last lived in Alaska. Technically all Alice did was help Esme with the timing, choosing to live in Denali during a period when none of the females but Carmen had any long-term partners. The results had been less than spectacular. The word _harlot_ had been thrown around more than once, as had the words _prude, completely psychotic,_ and _total misunderstanding_ before finally culminating in _Please leave, while the friendship between our clans can still be salvaged._ Having Alice as an ally wasn't by any means a guarantee.

Alice and Jasper, who had run southeast to a favorite spot on the Bogachiel River, were having their own conversation, and although the words were simple, the answers weren't.

"Alice, have you seen or are you just ignoring the very real possibility that this is all going to end in that girl's death?" At her expression, Jasper clarified, "I don't mean me. With the way that girl smells to Edward…"

"I know that," Alice admitted. "I didn't let him see, because I knew he'd only freak out, but I also saw other possibilities. Her death. And her…change."

"Oh Lord, here we go," Jasper groaned. "Alice, sugar, we can't just collect people like stamps. The Cullens have been doing it for over ninety years, and it just has to _stop._ It only draws more attention, which is what we spent all evening fighting about."

"It's not like that." Alice looked away, and Jasper knew her well enough to know what she wanted without her having to say it.

"Why, Alice?" Jasper wanted to know. "Why is it so important to you that this girl come to love you? We're here, aren't we? You have me and every ounce of my devotion. You have five other vampires who universally love you and are willing to call you family. Nobody wants this human thing with Edward to happen, not even Edward. So who is all this really for? You?" He looked away to the Olympic Wilderness, to which his young brother had beat a hasty exit. "Him?"

"I know you don't see it," Alice said. "But it's not for just one person. Yes, it's for me. I don't have limits to the amount of love I have to share. It's also for my brother. He's lonely and cranky and irritated all the time. And because of that, so are _you._ Don't you see?" She pressed a hand against Jasper's face. "If he's happy, you can be happy, too."

"And what about this girl whose future you're so keen to meddle with?" Jasper asked.

"I'm not meddling, I've _seen_—"

"Stop." Jasper pulled his wife's hand away from his face and shook his head, though he kept her hand in his. "I've agreed not to harm her because I believe in you, but don't call this something it's not. There are times when you see the future because that's just what it is, and there are times when you see a possibility you like and force it to happen the way you want it. Usually the latter involves vampires and humans, and it doesn't always work. So tell me whatever it is you didn't tell everyone else in there."

"First of all," Alice said quietly, "I've been watching Bella's decisions all day. I thought it might change when her mother called over and over and over, but she's gone to bed now, and it's perfectly solid. Bella's not going to say anything _at all._"

Jasper was surprised. "Really?"

"Yes, and I didn't engineer that. In fact, I think that's part of why I see them ending up together," Alice speculated. "Possibly."

"While I admit that's a relief to hear, it's not the basis for an _interspecies relationship_."

"Ew." Alice scrunched up her tiny nose. "You sound like those humans who derive an unhealthy enjoyment from donkeys. Edward and Bella are two sentient, free-willed beings."

"You told your brother that he's going to fall in love with a human girl who doesn't seem to like him," Jasper reminded her, "and his immediate reaction was denial, followed by fleeing out the back door. Even so, you've not seen a single possibility in which the girl's life doesn't intersect with ours. What does free will have to do with it?"

Edward had indeed fled into the mountains and rainstorm as fast as his immortal legs would carry him, wondering how the eyes that had stared at him with such pain today could ever look at him any other way. Could she possibly be that forgiving?

Yes, he mused, she would probably forgive him because she thought him a good man who was having a bad day. Edward wanted to be a good man, but he didn't see that he had a simple, clear-cut way to do that. A good man wouldn't run away from home and leave Bella alone with homicidal vampires, but he _was_ a homicidal vampire. It was so much easier to be a good man when he was human, Edward decided. Not that he had much memory of that time—the memories came in bits and pieces and were rarely about anything profound. But it just seemed it would be much easier to be a good man if he weren't every day fighting against his own nature. Humans thought their lives were _so complicated,_ but really they were too lazy or scared to just do the right thing.

And anyway, Alice was _wrong._ He didn't believe himself to be in love. Love was kissing and sunshine and rainbows, wasn't it? Edward didn't feel any of that. Bella was intriguing, sure, but that didn't mean love. He had a certain amount of respect for her—probably less than he had for his vampire parents, but well more than he had for any other human her age. He wanted good things for her—mostly that she wouldn't somehow become his next meal, but also that her head would feel better soon; that wasn't love. It grieved him in ways he didn't understand to even think of being away from her, but that wasn't love, either. He would gladly kill his sister just to keep the girl safe, but that _really_ wasn't love—he wanted to kill Rosalie at least twelve times a year. And now he was in a feud with his entire family over the girl, and the subject of _another_ matchmaking plot, when all he really wanted was to continue to live his peaceful, meaningless existence on his own.

Why in the hell did he bother saving her again?

"Ah," Edward whispered to himself; finally he remembered the entire quote, from the Dhammapada of all things. _Even a good man sees evil days, as long as his good deed has not ripened; but when his good deed has ripened, then does the good man see happy days._

Edward doubted very much that he'd ever get to see those happy days. But he decided he could be okay with that, just so long as his good deed—and Bella's life—had a chance to ripen. It wasn't love, he told himself, just a choice, an effort to be a good man in a world that wasn't made for him to be one.

Because if this one part of humankind could think the best of him for even one moment, maybe the rest of the world didn't have to.


	7. Time Is On My Side

_I love parentheses. (Really.)_

_

* * *

_

_Previously: Edward fought tooth and nail to prevent his family from murdering Bella. Then Alice predicted he was going to fall in love with Bella, and he ran away like a little boy and got all emo about it._

_Time Is On My Side_

_From Twilight Chapter 4: "Invitations"_

If there was one thing the Swans appreciated, it was fresh meat.

No, not _that_ kind of meat. Ew.

Charlie, unaccustomed to grocery shopping, neglected to tell Bella about Don Carlos Carnicería. It was actually Angela's mother, about a week or so after the new semester began (actually, the day after the accident with Tyler's van), who saw Bella scowling at the Thriftway refrigerated meat section as she picked through the packages, feeling very much like a turkey buzzard sifting through carcasses. Actually, if she _were_ a turkey buzzard, things would have been easier, as turkey buzzards are known for having digestive tracts resistant to the diseases carried by most roadkill. Yes, it was really that bad. Bella had half a mind to call the county health department.

"Are you Bella Swan?" Mrs. Weber asked. She was everything one would expect of a preacher's wife: kind, helpful, friendly, and sexually repressed. That last bit isn't particularly relevant, but it's worth noting she wasn't into anything one might classify as sexually deviant—all she wanted was a little creativity from Reverend Weber. Maybe a tryst in the choir loft. A nest of soft blankets in the back of the minivan? _A cheap hotel, a bottle of wine, and a vibrator, for heaven's sake!_

"Oh, yes ma'am," Bella answered, a little surprised. She really should have been used to being recognized by now, but every so often she met someone who seemed to know her, even though she had no recollection of them at all. "I'm sorry, have we met?"

After years and years of inviting people to church and getting uncomfortable looks in return, Mrs. Weber had learned speed was the easiest way to get her woman-of-God duty over with and get to the conversation she actually _wanted_ to have. The woman introduced herself, shook Bella's hand, dropped Angela's name, asked after Charlie, expressed concern about yesterday's car accident, and invited Bella to attend Sunday service all in the span of seven-point-two seconds. Poor Bella barely had time to blink before Mrs. Weber's standard greeting was over, and then the middle-aged lady was gently removing the world's ugliest ground beef from Bella's hands and whispering about Don Carlos, lamb chops, and porterhouse steak. The word 'succulent' was used more than once, but that had less to do with Carlos Rodriguez's products and more to do with something Mrs. Weber wished Rev. Weber would try, just one time, for the love of all that was holy. Okay, maybe not for all that was _holy_, but definitely for the love of all that was sexy.

Bella thanked the lady, silently vowing never to tell Angela how weird her mom was. As Mrs. Weber walked away, reflecting on her college days when she didn't have to hide her atheism, Bella made her way to the register so she could hurry to Don Carlos before they closed.

"Hola, buenos tardes," Bella greeted the proprietor. One good whiff of the inside of his shop, and Bella knew she was in the right place. "Please, _please_ tell me you have beef skirt. I haven't had decent fajitas since I left Arizona!"

"You and I are going to get along great," Mr. Rodriguez said with a smile, pulling out a supply of Styrofoam cups and lids from a cabinet. He knew he should switch to the more solid, hard plastic soup containers, but those were generally clear and tended to freak out the non-blood-buying customers, so cheaper opaque Styrofoam was what he went with. "Let me put these in the back, and I'll get you all set up."

Bella, who had never spent much time in butcher shops back in Phoenix, had no idea what the cups were for at all. She was too busy examining the meat marked 'elk' to pay much attention to them. "Sure, take your time."

That night, something about her day nagged at Bella, but she couldn't pinpoint what it was, and as she had a dozen other things on her mind in addition to two papers due soon and make-up work from the previous day, she forgot all about it.

xXxXx

For nearly two months after the bizarre near-miss with Tyler's van and rescue, Bella felt like Edward was punishing her for something. Ordinarily she would never think such a thing—she wasn't _that_ full of herself. He ignored her (or at least, he acted like it), which, fine, whatever, not everyone had to give her attention just so she'd feel validated. And it wasn't like he had to suck up to her just because of who her father was; after publicly saving the chief's daughter from certain death, no cop in town would ever give him a traffic ticket. After their mutual rudeness on the day of the accident, Bella hoped they'd be able to move on and be civil to one another. She even made a gesture of peace (a pez dispenser with Superman's head on it), but it seemed Edward wasn't interested in that level of maturity. He never spoke to Bella unless a lab assignment required him to do so, not even to say hello, and when forced to communicate he tended to use one-word sentences—not a very good quality in a lab partner, but Bella was more than capable of holding her own.

She told herself he was treating her with indifference, but that was inaccurate. Indifference was how he treated everyone else. His attitude, when he wasn't so aloof, felt like veiled disdain; she still occasionally caught him making _that face_ when she walked by. Bella called it Skunk Face (not out loud, or at least not when he was around). She had an urge to tell him it was bad for the skin, but his skin was always perfect, so it wouldn't have made much of an impression.

Not that she spent much time contemplating his skin. Or the way it felt against hers.

Whatever his problem was, Bella decided that it was just that: _his_ problem. What did Lama Gyatso always tell her? _"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."_ So what if Edward Cullen saved her life under mysterious, dramatic conditions, only to treat her like an insect afterward? Bella was not interested in letting anyone else make her feel bad about herself—it was a colossal waste of energy. She had homework to do, groceries to buy, dinners to make, required reading to get through, a detective novel to finish (_The Maltese Falcon_), and procedural dramas to watch (she was actually conducting an experiment, in which she made note of all the inaccuracies and gross factual misrepresentations and compared these to the wisdom gleaned from her father's reactions and her own secondhand forensic science books). She had to make adjustments to her newly arrived computer and install protection software, and obtain and install a wireless router for the new broadband internet (Charlie totally caved when Bella introduced him to the wonders of HD sports channels). She had to contact her mother via e-mail often and with favorable reports of Forks, lest Renee start freaking out, which wouldn't have resulted in any action—seriously, what could Renee do from Florida except make phone calls and gripe a lot?—but would definitely have made it even harder for Bella to get through the days without being able to slump onto her mother's bed and vent about mean people who suck.

Charlie was a non-practicing Lutheran, so he preferred to work on Saturdays and fish on Sundays, though what he expected to catch in the freezing weather was anybody's guess. Point being, that was how he found _his_ center; Bella still needed to find her own, and apparently she was free to do so without her father's presence, since he was almost _never home_. There were no nearby places to hear the calming wisdom of Buddhist monks—Bella had discovered their peace when she was fifteen and having a tough time with her mother's "endless youth"—but she found a Reform congregation who held Shabbat service in Port Angeles once a month at a fellowship hall. They welcomed her with open arms, and there were even a few kids who went to Forks High; nice kids, but mostly they just wanted to know about her bat mitzvah. It wasn't quite the same without Renee there to dole out hugs and flirt shamelessly with the cantor, but at least this way Bella felt like she was still grounded in her culture, still part of something greater than herself. She even went to the potluck dinner for Tu B'Shevat (best described as the beginning of the fiscal year for calculating the age of trees), and everyone complimented her special date-and-coconut cookies. She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be nervous about how her cooking would be received; back home, everyone smiled with relief the minute they found out Bella, and not Renee, had cooked any dish at all. Kosher or not, Fritos were _not_ an acceptable substitute for matzah balls in matzah ball soup.

There were other distractions to make the time go by. Namely, Mike Newton.

Mike meant well. Clearly he was going out of his way to make Bella feel welcome. Which was fine the first two weeks, but after a while Bella couldn't write it off as casual interest anymore. He was always _there._ Walking her to most of her classes, hanging around her lab table before the bell, jostling for a seat next to her in the cafeteria (Bella had taken to timing her cafeteria entrance with Angela's, hoping to sit between Angela and Jessica). For Valentine's Day he sent her flowers, or at least he said he did, although why he should send a bouquet without a name on the card only to step up and unceremoniously claim the floral arrangement the next day made little sense. Bella weighed her options about Mike; she wouldn't have been a normal girl if she didn't at least consider it. He wasn't a bad guy, and she might be able to grow to like him _that way_ after a while. Her father wouldn't give her a hard time about seeing him, which was the opposite of what most girls wanted in a boyfriend, but Bella's teen rebellion didn't lean in the direction of dating inappropriate boys, so the point was moot. Finally she decided that going out with Mike was not worth making an enemy of Jess. And anyway, she didn't want to deal with a big, ridiculous break-up scene whenever it came time to go away to university.

Between _all_ that and researching potential scholarships for college, along with occasionally having to make snacks for Charlie and his friends for NFL playoff games, life in Forks was as full as Bella could make it without sacrificing who she was.

It just wasn't…home.

Fortunately (or extremely unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it), Fate provided Bella with little mysteries to occupy her mind.

No matter how he insisted at the time that the only thing he did to save her was pull her out of the way, Bella knew Edward did more. She saw the evidence with her own eyes—except that the car that had an impression of Edward's shoulder didn't seem to have it anymore, only a few paint scratches, and Tyler's van was totaled and hauled away to the junkyard. Evidence be damned, Edward was never going admit to what really happened, and no one else would ever believe it (he was right about that, she was sure, and she really didn't want more accusations of hallucinations). Even if anyone did believe it, Bella got the distinct impression that neither Edward nor his anti-social family would appreciate the attention. Asshole or not, Bella was grateful enough to Edward for saving her life that she kept her word, kept her silence, kept his secret.

That didn't mean she was above trying to learn the rest of his secrets, when there was nothing better to do.

It was such a silly thing, but she found herself wondering who his girlfriend might be. Obviously he saw her every day—he always smelled of her, whoever she was. On the rare occasions when she arrived at school before the Cullens did, she noticed Edward always did the driving and led the others into the main building, but she never saw him arrive alone or sneak away to meet someone, and he always sat with his family at lunch, no one else. She could only conclude that he was a) stopping off at his girlfriend's house _very_ early each morning while his siblings waited in the car, which was unlikely—Rosalie didn't look like the type to wait for anyone; b) sleeping at the lady's house every night and picking his family up for school, which made sense until she Google-mapped his family's address and realized they lived too far away from town and from anyone else for him to be the one doing all that driving; c) secretly making out with a teacher during or between classes (and good on him for being the only Cullen not to date his sister), or d) he just liked wearing middle-aged women's body spray.

Wearing Bath and Body Works products was probably the most normal thing about him.

Edward's eyes _did_, in fact, change color on their own—Bella learned of it in stolen glances over potato slices (the osmosis unit) and in his nervous stare whenever they used X-Acto knives to dissect animal organs. From bright gold to almost-hazel to midnight black; it was like watching the changes in henna ink on the skin over time. Bella would never admit how taken she was with the process, but it was so _strange._ In her habitual search for patterns, she realized the Skunk Face made more appearances when Edward's eyes were black.

Then there was the eating thing. Bella wasn't a big fan of the cafeteria food, but she wasn't so spoiled that she felt the need to buy it and purposely turn up her nose at it. The Cullens did this, all of them, every day. At first it made her dislike them. Charlie was always saying how the Forks Food Bank was in sore need of more donations, especially in the winter, and here these rich jerks wasted enough food to feed five people for no apparent reason. It really was too bad Edward never caught on to the attention his eating habits were drawing from Bella—he was too busy pretending not to look at her to notice when she stopped pretending not to look at him.

After a couple of weeks, though, the food situation made Bella worry—could it be that their entire family was made up of people with eating disorders? She almost said something to Angela about the Cullen kids possibly suffering from anorexia (perhaps Emmett used to be really fat before he got all buff and steroid-y?), but then she noticed that, just occasionally, one of them would arrive in the cafeteria with a brown paper bag containing two or three tall, white Styrofoam cups. Gourmet coffee, maybe? There wasn't a Starbucks label, or any label at all, and the cups were closer in size to truck-stop fountain drinks than _grande _coffee cups, but sure enough, they shared their drinks and sucked at their straws contentedly, looking downright _happy_. Well, they were smiling anyway, although Edward hadn't thought of himself as 'happy' in well over forty years, and considered himself to be moderately sated by a quart of cow's blood at best. Bella was sure they were indulging in adult beverages, but she never smelled alcohol on Edward's breath. Just more whore perfume on his clothes. When she realized his eyes brightened a bit on the days when he had one of those drinks, things started to get more interesting.

Things were already well beyond interesting for Edward Cullen.

It was some weeks before he felt completely confident that Bella wasn't going to tell anyone the truth about the van. By all appearances, it seemed she wanted to forget about it—the investigation and witness statements Edward had been fearing never happened, because Bella convinced her father that the drug test alone was enough to convict Tyler, and that it would make everyone's lives harder, including hers, if he started hauling people in for questioning or pushing for a Reckless Endangerment charge. Certainly she discouraged questions about the accident when she went back to school. However, this had the side effect of making Edward wonder why she never said anything about him at all anymore, not to anyone. Not a 'Yeah, Edward pulled me out of the way,' or even a 'He won't let me copy his work in biology,' and certainly never 'God, he's so handsome. Why doesn't he have a girlfriend again?'

That last one was mostly wishful thinking. Nobody ever said that about him. The fear was so ingrained that even when mortals found him attractive, they didn't question his lack of attachment (although they did make mental notes to think about him when they masturbated later…which was awkward, especially that time when the thought came from an old man). That was just normal for humans. But from Bella, the lack of curiosity somehow hurt more, even though officially it was what he wanted. The only human being not afraid to talk to him or put him in his place, and she still appeared to find him uninteresting. Occasionally he wondered: if he didn't possess a vampire's beauty, would anyone still find him even remotely attractive? Talk about a bruise to the self-esteem.

Of course, there were some moments when Edward desperately wished he wasn't such a bleeding-heart vegetarian. (Metaphorically speaking, of course. His heart didn't bleed, and he had always hated vegetables, even as a human. He really needed to find a better word for his diet.) Specifically, he cursed the ground Mike Newton walked on, and every time the boy plopped his baby-fat-laden ass in front of Bella at _their_ biology table, he wanted Mike to die a terrible, bloody, gruesome, EVERLASTING HELL-BEAST DEATH TO END ALL OTHER DEATH!

Or something like that.

Ridiculous, that's what it was. Here this girl should have been absolutely uninteresting to Edward precisely because she was so interesting to Mike, and everything Mike liked was lame. The kid liked _basketball_, for god's sake. Didn't Carlisle say 'netball is for women?' He said it ninety years ago, but still—everybody who was cool liked baseball. Then again, cool people didn't say 'cool' as often as they used to, so Edward really didn't have a very good sense of perspective. Be that as it may, Edward wanted what Mike wanted.

_Wait, wait, wait—since when do I want her? That's probably in my head because Alice put it there, but I just want her blood. Don't I? What is there to want?_

What, indeed. She was just a mortal girl, after all. Nothing special about her. Not her strange sense of humor that most of her human friends didn't get. Not the face she made when Edward walked into the room, even though she wasn't looking at him, like she just knew he was there. Not how fast she could decode a cryptogram in those variety puzzle magazines she always had. No, nothing set her apart, at least not in a good way. She was plain—so plain-looking, in fact, that she'd gone all the way around it and come back looking interesting. She smelled too delectable, she tripped over her own feet, and she often bit her lip in that infuriating way that she never seemed to notice. (And why should she? What kind of loser chronicles the biting of their own lip?)

In Edward's mind, which followed Bella around constantly through the minds of others (without satisfactory cause, and to the continual bewilderment of most of his siblings, who weren't the least bit fooled by his disinterested pretense), the human girl was a world-class klutz, managing to fall no less than seven times a day. _She must have equilibrium problems_, he guessed, _or just truly awful balance._ Every moment he spent within smelling distance of her, he was frightened that she might fall and scrape her hands or knees. Being prone to exaggeration, he translated this into a fear for her hand-eye coordination as well. Whenever the pair of them used scalpels in class, Edward felt caught between a desire to snatch the stainless steel blade from her hands and forbid her to use it, and a crippling sense of dread that warned him if he moved a single muscle while she held a knife, she would accidentally slice open her fragile skin and let loose a stream of warm, delicious, irresistible blood.

He need not have worried; Bella's clumsiness was actually the result of one leg being an inch longer than the other. This apparent ineptitude was not nearly as terrible or frequent as anyone imagined it to be, especially Edward, and it definitely did not extend to her fingers. Not for nothing was she such an excellent biology student—it was the class she gave the most effort. If anyone had bothered to ask her, they'd have learned the colleges on her list were all schools with Criminal Justice programs, specifically those that offered Bachelor's degrees in Forensic Science. Her particular ambition in life was to solve mysteries with the power of observation and evidence.

Too bad Edward never bothered to learn that. If he had, he might have known that the great 20th century philosopher Mick Jagger was wrong: time was most definitely _not_ on his side.


	8. Pez and Valentine Roses

_I love hyphens, too—they're awesome.__

* * *

_

Pez and Valentine Roses

Ever since she was ten years old, Bella had a gift.

Not just her hypersensitivity. This gift wasn't something that could be enhanced supernaturally with venom, like Edward's mind-reading, Alice's precognition, or Carlisle's compassion (compassion being produced by the pituitary gland, apparently). Mostly her gift was a product of seeing things as they were and being unafraid to speak the truth, but certainly Bella cultivated it as she grew in understanding and intelligence. Sometimes it failed her, sometimes she didn't use it, occasionally she wasn't even aware she was using it, and every so often it came back to bite her in the ass, but it was all hers.

"Hello, Edward," Bella said, her tone friendly. It was Wednesday, the day after the accident, and she was feeling grateful to be alive.

Edward gave her a curt nod without looking at her and pretended to turn his attention back to Mr. Banner, who was busy sipping at a canteen of coffee spiked with vodka and sneaking a peak at a _yuri_ manga about three lesbians. He was not even remotely close to caring about beginning his lecture yet. In retrospect, Edward probably should have chosen a different focal point.

"I managed to make it all the way out of the parking lot this morning without a scratch," Bella joked.

Nothing. Edward was doing an excellent job of concealing his relief and pretending he had a hearing problem.

"Did you come back to class yesterday?" Bella asked, sitting on her stool and pulling her things out of her bag. "I need a copy of the notes I missed."

Edward just shrugged. He had his textbook in front of him, unopened, and no notebooks or binders at all; he never took notes. His teachers had long ago ceased to question it—those who suspected him of cheating learned quickly that he and his siblings were all smarter than the entire teaching staff.

Somehow their "smartness" didn't translate to things like strategic flaws, a crappy station wagon, the occasional ugly outfit and ponytail, or, in this case, perfunctory social graces as a preventative measure.

Edward had spent part of his night trying to decide how best to deal with the Bella situation. Or, as Rosalie dubbed it, Edward's Royal Fuck-Up. After a really long five minutes, he decided that the best course was to resume damage-control mode. Discourage the girl from trying to find out more by being rude again—it was painful to consider it, but it was a plan, and if the result was that she stopped speaking to him for the rest of her life, at least she'd go on to have that life.

So when she greeted him with his first name and an actual _smile_ on her face, he went with the curt nod instead of a vague "Oh, hey" and his nose in a book, which would have given the impression that she was barely worth his notice, but that he'd condescend to a greeting. When she told her joke, he didn't give a half-hearted laugh, as if her attempt at humor was lame and dorky. When she asked him for notes, he kept silent instead of nonchalantly saying that he didn't have any.

And instead of Bella not wanting to talk to him, she said, "Hello? Earth to Edward. Are you okay?" Edward's intelligence and decades of mind-reading hadn't helped him understand girls, either. Nor had the ages provided him with sense enough to know that Bella didn't stand for horseshit. Fortunately for Edward, Bella left him alone while class got started, and he relaxed, though not enough to breathe through his nose, because _nummy!_

Bella didn't know what to make of Edward today. He hadn't said anything to her at lunch, which was normal enough, since they sat on opposite sides of the cafeteria, but he seemed to be trying not to look at her. No wave 'hello' or even an acknowledgement that she was in the same room. And then this nonsense of not answering her perfectly polite greeting in class…he didn't have to like her, but what was his not even asking 'How's your head?'

Most likely Edward was still upset about how rude she'd been at the hospital, Bella decided. She _was_ kind of a bitch, and he didn't deserve it. Much. The whole 'Please agree to my version of events' thing wouldn't have bothered her so much if he hadn't been such a prick about it. Still, Bella knew when she was wrong. Anticipating a little friction, Bella had come prepared with a peace offering. But it wouldn't do much good if Edward wouldn't speak to her.

"So I was thinking," she began a few minutes before the end of class, "we sort of got off to a weird—"

"What do you think you're doing?" Edward had finally realized he was going to have to speak if he wanted to stop her before she could get any _nicer_ and cause him to spontaneously combust from guilt.

After a few rapid blinks, Bella said, "Grumpy much? Did you forget to drink your coffee this morning, or did somebody impale your dog on a pike in the front yard?"

_Impale?_ Much as he wanted to ask Bella what the _hell_ kind of books she'd been reading, Edward maintained his sour expression.

"Well, Oscar the Grouch," Bella finally said, "the way it works is, my vocal cords vibrate, my mouth and tongue move, and sounds come out. Now you try it."

"Just stop," Edward replied, though he wanted to punch himself. _Must remember to bite myself later as punishment._ "We're not friends."

Bella looked away and gathered up her things. "Right." The rejection stung, but she allowed herself to feel the sting. Not because she liked it, but because she wanted the memory handy for future reference—she was never going to let him make her feel this way again. There was only one more thing she wanted to do before she completely wrote him off. Just as the bell rang, she pulled something out of her bag and dropped it on the table. "This is for you."

Edward glanced at the object, not the least bit sure what to expect, but certainly not expecting it to be a vintage Superman Pez dispenser. That's right, _vintage._ The kind with _no feet._

Bella had no way of knowing the full impact of her gift. She only knew that she originally meant it to be a joke, a way of apologizing for the albino Clark Kent remark (which was now legendary in the Cullen home). Her grandfather, who worked at the Pez company on the east coast when he was a young man, had given it to her when she was a child, and she just thought it was a regular toy. It didn't occur to her that it was much more. She had no way of knowing, for example, that this wasn't just _a_ Superman Pez dispenser, but _the_ Superman Pez dispenser. Pez Candy, Inc. had only made three prototypes for a Superman dispenser since they first began making cartoon-headed dispensers in the 1950s, but due to licensing issues, the Superman line was never mass produced or released onto the market—the other two prototypes were owned by very silly private collectors with too much money on their hands. Bella had no clue of the object's value, its rarity, or the number of people who had attempted to find it at the famous auction house Christie's and on the black market.

She also had no way of knowing that on his last summer vacation, Edward had gone to three West Coast trade shows and the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia in San Francisco looking for this very thing. Bella would never have dreamed that Edward and his brother Emmett were, in fact, the two silly private collectors already in possession of the other two Supermans (that's right, Supermans, not Supermen), and that they'd been competitively searching for the third Superman Pez dispenser for the last thirty years at least.

By the time Edward was finished gaping in total shock, Bella was gone. And he didn't even have a chance to say _thank you. _Edward held the little piece of plastic with all the delicacy he could muster and felt the total annihilation that could only come with Bella's real gift: making him realize he was a tremendous asshole.

* * *

After the inevitable howls of jealousy from Emmett and Esme's abject pleading that Edward reconsider his resolution, things mostly settled down in the Cullen household. The attic served as the family trophy room for any awards that were too old to match their current ages or otherwise incompatible with their official cover. Jasper's bowling trophies from the eighties were up there, as were Rosalie's debate team medals and Alice's certificate for growing a prize-winning, seven-pound tomato (only twelve ounces shy of the world record). The climate-controlled room, also home to display cases for everyone's most valued collections, proudly received its newest addition on Edward's shelf. Edward would go upstairs and visit it every day, staring at Superman's little head and square jaw. When he was sure no one was thinking about him, he would sometimes lift it to his nose and inhale. He told himself it was because he wanted to know if Bella had ever used it to hold actual Pez, but that was a ridiculous lie. He wanted to smell the girl.

_Yes, I am a glutton for punishment,_ he thought to himself. _No, I am not going to apologize for it._

He thought about how to thank her—he _wanted_ to thank her, but every time he started to consider it, Alice would have a vision of him and Bella and that smile, that trusting, loving smile that surely signaled her eventual doom. Alice never actually showed him she'd had a vision of an alternate future in which Bella died at Edward's hand (teeth, actually), but it wasn't exactly a stretch for anyone to figure out, so why she bothered concealing it was a mystery nobody cared to solve. That was just Alice for you. (Actually, half of manipulating any future was concealing other possibilities. It was her way of encouraging Edward to pursue his tender feelings, but damned if anyone else but Esme wanted Edward to do _that._)

The day after The Pez Gifting, Edward spent the whole morning agonizing over whether it would be enough to pass Bella a secret thank-you note, like a nerdy, overly polite fifth-grader. He even wrote the note in his flowing script. He always did have the most beautiful handwriting—everyone in his family said so, until it became a running joke. "Edward, you're a humorless jerk and a pain in the ass, but at least you're a good calligrapher."

When he caught sight of her in the cafeteria, however, he realized that he couldn't do it. Not because he wasn't grateful, or because he didn't feel bad about his poor manners. Rather, the opposite was true: he was _highly_ grateful, he was _extremely_ remorseful about his behavior, and what the hell was wrong with this girl, coming into _his_ town, _his_ school, _his_ life, and making him feel bad about himself? Who was she to make him feel anything, ever? She was his food, or at least she was designed to be his sustenance, not his conscience. He crumpled up the thank-you note and tossed it into a wastebasket, vowing never to say a word to Bella that wasn't about their class work.

Alice was pissed.

How dare he? How _dare_ he try to assert any form of control over his own future? Didn't he know his future was hers to arrange? Couldn't he see this was all for his own good? (She only thought that for a minute before taking a step back and rearranging her way of thinking. Or at least, she rearranged the semantics of it, but she still wanted what she wanted, and she still thought it was in everyone else's best interest to do as she said. Alice was a lot like Edward in that way.)

Although Alice did _want _to talk to Bella and get to know her, some strongly worded advice from her husband and father shut that idea down—whether such an attempt would bring Edward around or not, it would definitely put Bella in his path more often than he was physically comfortable with. He had confessed to Carlisle that he felt the only way Bella _might_ be safe from him was if he didn't allow himself to breathe at all in biology class. It was a bit of an exaggeration, but the horror of making a new best friend only to have her brother feed on the girl was enough to keep Alice's friendly overtures at bay. Besides, an Edward dead set against something was an Edward that did not respond well to a direct push, as evidenced by the now historic Edward Versus Rosalie Verbal Smackdown.

She did try to let Edward go at his own pace, still hoping for a bright future for everyone. But as the days became weeks and Edward made no progress with the Swan girl, Alice's visions became less encouraging. Occasionally she would still see flashes of Bella and Edward together, but mostly she saw Edward alone in the future, somehow even lonelier, if by "lonely" one meant "spending an unhealthy amount of time with his Pez collection but otherwise going about his business." When she tried searching Bella's future, it was always different. Sometimes she'd be in a sunny place with lots of hills and moderately tall buildings—a college, one Alice had never been to before. Sometimes there were cowboy hats, and once she saw Bella driving past an enormous white statue of an old man with mutton chops; Jasper laughed at the sketch Alice drew and said it was a monument to "Governor Houston, that crazy old son of a bitch!" Occasionally Alice saw Bella at a water park, or a beach; often she saw her in a laboratory. Generally Bella had a small smile on her face, sometimes laughter, but as far as Alice was concerned, Bella never did seem as happy in these moments as she did in her elusive, uncertain future with Edward. Alice herself was curiously absent in all of these visions; she realized it was because she'd made no choices of her own about what to do.

Well, that was about to change. _Obviously_ those two needed her help if they ever wanted to escape such dreary fates.

In February Alice overheard a few girls giggling about Valentine's Day, which boys they hoped would single them out, and what gifts they wanted (everything from jewelry to multiple orgasms, a typically ridiculous thing for a virgin to expect). At that point, Alice got a few bright ideas. First, that she and Jasper would be leaving town that evening for a nice hotel in Vancouver, and second, that Bella would be receiving a "gift" from "Edward."

Alice saw to every detail. She avoided thinking about it around Edward without much difficulty— rather than chant songs or foreign languages in her head (which was so obvious), she indulged in a few of her more libidinous thoughts. Once Edward heard sexual fantasies that involved inanimate objects, he usually headed out for his now daily run a little early. Everyone knew why he was running, even if they didn't understand what good it did; it wasn't like the exercise triggered an endorphin release to make him feel better. Mostly, he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts so that he could try to identify them. Which suited Alice perfectly, as his absence allowed her to work on her manipulative endeavor without interruption.

Alice used a local florist (she firmly believed in supporting small businesses whenever possible), and she paid with one of Edward's credit cards that he didn't use too often, knowing that it wasn't an account that sent updates to his cell phone. The message accompanying the floral arrangement, she decided, should be ambiguous—Edward wasn't one for showboating, at least not as far as Bella knew, and signing the card "your superhero" or "Clark Kent" might bring up questions about the accident, which wasn't what anyone wanted. Instead she just had it say "For a treasured friend." Subtle, but she hoped rather than saw that Bella would figure it out. But just in case she didn't, Alice was also hoping the florist or even the delivery driver would spread the gossip. (Unfortunately the family who ran the flower shop was the Nguyen family, Vietnamese refugees who had absolutely zero interest in the romances of their neighbors, especially during one of the busiest social holidays of the year. But hey, you can't win 'em all.)

Things went according to plan; that was Alice's gift in action. Eric Yorkie gave Bella a card with something nerdy on the front—he designed it himself with some card-making software. Tyler, still unsure where he stood with the Swan family, thought about bringing Bella a batch of homemade brownies, since it was the one food he knew how to cook, but decided his gift would not be appreciated, and most likely would be tested for illegal drugs. Mike, who was on a budget thanks to a recent unexpected surge in gas prices, just gave Bella a king-sized Snickers bar. When 3:00 rolled around and Bella made her way home, she had just enough time to walk into the house and put down her things when the delivery guy arrived.

Showing uncharacteristic restraint, Alice had gone with simple, beautiful long-stem red roses, three dozen of them. Nothing too gaudy or showy by Cullen standards, but obviously tasteful and expensive. By a stroke of luck for which Alice could not take credit, the roses happened to be of the non-fragrant hybrid variety, leaving Bella free to display them in the house without being overwhelmed by nature's perfume. (They had a general plant-and-water smell, but it was a good, clean smell, so she didn't mind it.) Bella e-mailed her mother first to ask if the flowers were from her, then called Jessica and Angela to see if either of them knew who might be the sender. She _knew _they weren't from her dad; he hadn't sent her a Valentine gift since the fifth grade. The florist was too busy to even answer the phone, and the card was so "ambiguous" that it came across as ironically generic (or maybe generic irony—Bella couldn't decide which). Receiving no satisfactory answer from any quarter, Isabella sat on her couch with her textbook, flipping through pages and periodically looking at her mysterious roses.

That night, Bella dreamed of being kissed, among other things. Charlie used his ear plugs so he wouldn't have to hear his daughter moaning in her sleep.

Alice watched her carefully laid plan unfold with pride, happy that she'd accomplished her task. Unfortunately, that was the extent of Alice's planning. Bella went to school the next day, shivering cold but upbeat, and…nothing happened. She didn't approach Edward and strike up a conversation, nor did he approach Bella. Her friends still speculated who sent the roses, but no one suggested Edward at all. Why should they? As far as they knew, Edward had no more interest in Bella than he did in anyone else. What's more, Mike heard Jessica waxing envious to Angela and, sensing an opportunity, he hung around Bella's lab table in biology as usual and told her the flowers were actually from _him._ As if he'd just forgotten to mention it in any of the _other_ classes he had with Bella all morning long.

It was the perfect opportunity for Edward to say something.

He didn't.

Edward maintained his impassive expression throughout Mike and Bella's conversation and for the full class period. The only thing the young vampire said to Bella the entire hour was: "Here's your Petri dish."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Alice thundered on the way home from school.

"What on earth are you shouting about?" Edward replied, sounding rather huffy. "I'm just driving."

"Don't act like you can't read my mind right now," Alice retorted, mentally running through the last several days' events from her perspective. In the back seat, Emmett and Rosalie exchanged glances and eyerolls, positive this was about Bella. They didn't particularly care about it, but the yelling was killing their backseat make-out mood. "I set up the perfect gift," Alice ranted, "I mean _perfect,_ and you just…just…"

"Had no idea what was going on?" Edward finished for her, expertly guiding his Volvo up the twisty highway. "Or that I was even meant to do or say anything at all?"

"Don't you sit there and act all innocent!" If Alice were capable of overheating from anger, steam would have been spewing from her ears. "You overgrown…prepubescent…"

"I was kept entirely in the dark about your activities," Edward reminded his sister. "You didn't give me a playbook for this one, so stop acting like I didn't follow instructions."

"But, but…you _knew_ that boy was lying!"

"And?"

"And? _And?_ All my hard work—!"

"Was for nothing," Edward finished, more than a little impatient now. "I'm not going to mildly acquiesce to your whims just because you use a little finesse, Alice. If I wanted to give Bella a gift, I'd have done it. Mike Newton managed to take advantage of your anonymity, but that's your own fault for not having a back-up plan in place. Not my problem."

At that point, Jasper had to place a hand on his wife's neck and forcibly calm her down, lest she throttle Edward in the car. It wouldn't have hurt him any, but the fierceness of her attack would have caused an accident, which meant they'd have to take one of the other cars to school while his was in the body shop (or more likely the junkyard). Of course, Jasper could tell Edward was hiding something, but he had no way of knowing the specifics. Pursuing it would only result in Alice getting even more upset, so Jasper chose to focus on his wife while shooting Edward a brief but suspicious look.

In point of fact, Edward had been well aware of Alice's plans almost from the moment she conceived them. He simply chose not to interfere, and in doing so changed none of the things Alice could see and made no impact on any of the things she couldn't. This wasn't exactly his first time having his family conspire to get him a girlfriend—whenever Alice started thinking too much about weird sex, he knew she was plotting something that involved him personally and didn't want him to know about it. Which was _really_ disturbing. But it also meant her next move was predictable without needing either mindreading or precognition. All he had to do was call all his creditors and find out which card had recent activity—easily done when he was out for his daily run, and Alice was too busy plotting what _she_ was going to do to bother checking what _he_ was already doing. It was all too easy for him to halt the transaction, or even call the florist and cancel.

Which he did not do.

It wasn't because he wanted Alice to have her fun—if anything, he should have been openly discouraging her from her fixation with the girl. It _certainly_ wasn't that he wanted Mike Newton to take credit for Alice's flowers. That actually _did_ piss him off, although Edward couldn't have said why. When Bella responded with a polite but dubious 'How thoughtful of you' rather than an enthusiastic 'Thank you, Mike! That was so sweet,' Edward couldn't have said why he found her cagey answer so gratifying.

He couldn't say why he spent all day Valentine's Day in a bizarre state of mingled hopefulness and dread that Jasper wisely chose not to point out, nor why he found himself tempted to stick close to town that afternoon and tail the florist's delivery driver (he didn't do it, though, because that shit was just creepy, and it was bad enough that he followed Bella around in people's thoughts at school). The vague sense of anxiety he felt as he looked at Bella the day after (when she wasn't looking, of course) was entirely inexplicable. The lift to his spirits when she smiled to herself had to be a coincidence. And the disappointment when she didn't speak to him unless spoken to (for the thirty-third day in a row) made absolutely no sense. But not making any sense didn't make it any less real.

What he said to Alice was not just a lie, it was an inverse truth: if he _hadn't_ wanted to give Bella a gift, even by roundabout means, he would have just put a stop to it from the beginning. So while his sister fumed at him unintelligibly to the general amusement of their other siblings, Edward's thoughts were with the brown-haired girl.

_Hope you enjoyed your roses. Thank you for the Pez. __I'll treasure you—it—for the rest of my life._

_

* * *

_

**A/N: The thing about there not being any Superman Pez dispensers in distribution is true. The part about the three prototypes is creative license. Please do not send weird e-mails to Christie's Auction House asking how much a Superman Pez dispenser will sell for at the next pop culture auction.**


	9. The Jig Is Up

_Previously: Alice sent Bella anonymous flowers for Valentine's Day in the hopes that Bella would magically conclude they were from Edward, or even that he'd openly take credit for the flowers. He didn't, and in fact Mike Newton claimed the flowers were from **him**. Though Bella was a bit skeptical about that, she had no reason to assume the flowers were from Edward, either._

The Jig is Up

In March, Jessica explained to Bella that the Spring Formal was coming up, and that it was school tradition for the girls to ask the boys. This confused Bella, as Sadie Hawkins Day (well known for being a girls' choice event) was supposed to be in November. Actually, it had been celebrated every November since the 1930s all across the US and Canada, except for Forks, which just _had_ to be different. She wasn't the only one to notice this—all of the Cullen children had attended Sadie Hawkins dances for decades, and they felt the Forks version was tantamount to celebrating Halloween in April. Nonetheless, Jessica's purpose in calling was to ask Bella for clearance to ask Mike to the Girls' Choice Spring Formal. Because the only not-undead mammals more viciously territorial about the pool of potential mates than male elephants are human females. There's a whole ranking system, rights of prior claim, by-laws governing whether a boy's interest should be returned if he had a former serious relationship with one's best friend, which in turn necessitates the friend-o-meter to determine how close two girls are and thus how a dispute may be resolved…it's complicated. And it mostly existed in Jessica's head. The same Jessica who couldn't understand the caste system of India for World History. Go figure.

Anyhow, Jessica asked Bella if she was already planning to ask Mike, in accordance with the Girl Code of Dating. Bella, of the previously mentioned Short Leg Syndrome and still embarrassed by an incident at Julia Martinez's _quinceañera_ when she was fifteen, reassured her friend that she had no intention of going to the dance. A quick look at her calendar revealed that the dance fell on the holiday of Purim, and Bella knew Jessica wouldn't ask too many questions when Bella simply said she had a religious gathering to attend. Which was too bad, because a formal dance with secretive sips of spiked punch was pretty tame compared to what a Purim celebration was like; her Catholic friends back home called it Jewish Mardi Gras. Bella was looking forward to Rabbi Steve getting so drunk that he couldn't tell if he was blessing Mordecai or cursing Haman—that was actually the commandment for how drunk everyone was supposed to get, which was a weird gauge to begin with, but the hilarious part would be watching him try to check. Rabbi Darren back home usually wound up insulting someone's mother. Hopefully _this_ rabbi would also be dressed in women's clothes, but that was totally optional. Bella wouldn't be drinking because she'd be driving, but that didn't lessen the fun one bit. She gave Jessica her blessing for Mike without a second thought.

Imagine Bella's disappointment for her friend the next day when Jessica had nothing at all to report about Mike, and Mike plopped on Bella's lab table after lunch, as usual, working up the courage to ask her to ask him to the Spring Formal.

"So," he said in what was a miserable attempt at a casual air, "Jessica asked me to the spring dance."

"That's great," Bella encouraged him, making the boy feel awkward. "You'll have a lot of fun with Jessica." _And then maybe you'll stop trying so hard to make time with me._

"Well…" he began.

Edward, silent as the snow, with much trepidation, and in full violation of his Pretend I'm Ignoring Her campaign, inclined his head toward Bella.

Shocking. No, really. Surely there has never been anything so significant as a vampire who doesn't like talking to humans and routinely practices moving when he doesn't need to suddenly _inclining his head without saying anything._ Surprisingly enough, Bella didn't notice the minute movement out of some "electrical awareness," as she was busy focusing on her actual conversation with the guy who _hadn't_ been turning his nose up at her for the past two months.

"Sorry," Bella answered quietly after Mike explained that he gave Jessica a definite maybe instead of a yes, "but I'm not going. I'm busy that night." _God, what a jerk_, Bella mused. Not to mention clueless. Did he not realize that girls talk to each other about these things in advance? And even if he didn't, what did he think was going to happen between the girls if Jessica found out he told her 'maybe' and then came back with a 'no' _after_ talking to Bella? Clearly he had no future as a politician.

"Are you just saying that because you asked someone else?" Mike wanted to know. His eyes flickered over to Edward for a split second. _That_ was a glance Bella didn't miss.

"If I did," she replied, momentarily considering and dismissing the possibility of asking Edward to go _anywhere_ with her, let alone a formal occasion that would require them to touch, whereupon he would surely faint dead away from disgust or prove medical doctors of the world wrong by literally dying of embarrassment, "I'd just tell you, not lie about it. Don't you think my showing up at the dance would be a dead giveaway?"

"Well what else can you possibly have going on?" Mike demanded, his little mind unable to conceive that there was anything else in the world entire that might be happening that night, or at least nothing that would interest the girl he'd put so much time and effort into flirting with for two months.

Bella did not like Mike's tone one bit. Neither did Edward, who was entirely captivated by the conversation going on two feet away from him. Or almost entirely. Part of his mind was busy picturing what it would be like to dance with Bella, or even to see her dressed in formal clothing; another part was dreaming of grabbing hold of Mike by the ankle and dipping him headfirst into the piranha-infested waters of the Amazon River. It was quite nice there this time of year, if you didn't mind the rainy season.

"You know, I was going to tell you my plans," Bella replied crisply, "and I was going to suggest you get back to Jessica and tell her yes, because she likes you. But I don't think I want to do that to her. She's my friend, and I _give a damn_ about her feelings. Do you really think it's okay for you to leave her hanging and come to me like this? She's not your back-up plan, Mike Newton, she's a person. And you're a prick. What I have going on that night is none of your damned business, but as far as you're concerned I'll be in New Guinea catering an event for cannibals. So by all means: get your ass off my workstation and into your own chair."

On the other side of the room, Angela and two other girls started clapping, until every female in the room had joined in. Mike was not only mortified, he and Edward were both reasonably sure that by the end of the day, there was no way any girl would be asking Mike Newton to the Spring Formal, or anywhere else for that matter. Edward was also thinking old-timey words like 'spitfire' and 'gumption' and 'moxie.' But not 'tarnation,' because he wasn't a hillbilly. _Emmett_ was the one who took twenty-one years to stop talking like Yosemite Sam.

"That's enough, people," Mr. Banner called over the noise with firm disinterest. _Damn kids and their Melrose Place bullshit._ "Take your seats. Today we'll be covering biochemistry in the human body…"

Grateful for some actual work to do, Bella opened her book and ran her fingers over the words, humming under her breath to calm herself down—it wasn't Tibetan Buddhism, but sometimes it did the trick. She didn't intend to get self-righteous and sharp-tongued with Mike, but he brought it on himself.

"Deep Purple?" Edward interrupted her thoughts when he recognized the band whose work Bella believed she was butchering. He knew perfectly well he had no business talking to this girl, especially after two solid months of 'successfully' avoiding her, so much so that Alice's visions of Bella and Edward as a happy couple had completely disappeared. But Bella's outburst, her refusal of Mike, and her choice of music had finally pushed Edward to his limit. "Aren't you a little young to like a song recorded forty-three years ago?"

(In another part of the school, Alice accidentally scared her entire Economics class when she randomly yipped with joy.)

Bella blinked and looked up, debating if it would be wise to call Edward's attention to the fact that he was entering an actual conversation with her, _finally_. Probably not, she decided. She also didn't make a ridiculous assertion that his extended silence up to this point meant he regretted saving her life—that was needlessly dramatic and completely unfounded, not to mention entirely irrelevant to anything else _at all_. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and opted to play it by ear and see what happened. _Something_ was different about Edward, and she'd never figure it out by scaring him off. "If you're not too young to recognize 'Hush' just from my tuneless humming, then no, I don't think I am, either. And you're the wrong person to be calling _anyone_ too young." She looked back down at her paper, drumming her pencil and switching to the nonsense lyrics. "_Naa, na na naa, na na NAA, na na naa._"

Amused by both her unintentionally ironic crack about his age and her anachronistic musical preference, Edward smirked. "I always thought this song was fairly ridiculous."

Without missing a beat, as if they always had these little talks, she replied, "And I always thought it was sexy."

"Sexy?" The word seemed to trip out of Edward's mouth, like it didn't belong there. He tended not to think of things as sexy, just 'appealing' or 'unappealing.' The backs of Bella's bras (he only ever let himself look at the back—he wasn't a _total_ pervert) were usually very appealing.

"Yes, Edward." It didn't escape his attention that she had finally called him by his first name, which made what she sang next all the more appropriate. "_Hush. Hush. Thought I heard her calling my name now._"

Bella's voice was not, in fact, tuneless, nor was it terrible. Edward just hated this song. He hated most songs from the sixties, or at least that's what he said when asked, because not many people in this century cared to differentiate between genres of previous generations, and anyway no one actually cared what he liked. But he _definitely_ hated this song. Until now. With this human girl. And her ridiculous appreciation for music almost the same age as her truck.

Her eyes met Edward's, and there was something in them that made him pay more careful attention to the way her lips wrapped around the words. "_Hush, hush. She broke my heart but I love her just the same now._"

Swallowing back a small puddle of venom that had nothing to do with blood-thirst, Edward silently remembered another lyric of the song he didn't like. _Hush. Hush. I need her lovin' and I'm not to blame now._

"Sexy," he finally agreed, staring at her throat now and feeling more venom well up. "I guess I can see that."

Something about the way Edward looked at her made Bella highly uncomfortable. He definitely wasn't looking in her eyes, but she didn't have much in the way of breasts, either, so that didn't seem likely. The direction of his gaze (were his eyes getting _darker?_) led her to believe he was staring at the necklace that had been hidden under her sweaters and turtlenecks for months until today: a silver Star of David. He looked like he wanted to rip it right off her neck.

"Problem?" Bella growled, touching the Star with two fingers.

Thinking quickly, Edward covered his mouth and nose, made a false gagging sound, and rushed out of the room (or rather, he plodded out of the room, but to the humans it looked like running). He hoped Bella would assume he just felt sick—Mr. Banner certainly did, but he didn't actually care. Angela the would-be nurse worried for him, an unusual sentiment that threw Edward off just enough to stop him from rushing back into that classroom and…well, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do, exactly.

Something with his lips, most likely.

_Teeth,_ he thought. _I meant teeth, not lips. Didn't I?_

It was Alice who skipped class and met Edward outside, Alice who made him sit in a quiet alcove while she hurried to Don Carlos for a quart of hog blood, Alice who sat with him and didn't ask questions, just sang "Wicked Game" in her head (her brother wasn't the only music-lover in the family) and let Edward drink in peace.

Except that the chorus of "Wicked Game" is _No I don't wanna fall in love (This love is only gonna break your heart)…with you._

"Crap," Edward sighed in defeat.

"Told you," Alice replied, wondering how long she would have to indulge this emo bullshit before Edward did something about his feelings. She looked ahead a little to see how the rest of the day would go…and saw what promised to be on par with a circus act. Her brother saw it with her, and they both smiled.

* * *

Edward had a front row seat, so to speak, for the big show.

When Eric approached Bella after school, it was with full knowledge of The Great Telling Off of Mike Newton. The whole school knew about it within an hour of the incident, and it was a safe bet that the rest of the little town would know within an hour of school letting out—even earlier if the junior/senior English teacher went into the teachers' lounge to text-message the town librarian, who in turn would share the news with her other friend who cashiered at the Thriftway, who would pass along the news to everyone who came to her register that day, including Mike's mom. Small town gossip wasn't just an attribute of Forks; it was a living, breathing thing, almost the lifeblood of the community.

Jessica didn't know whether to be happy that Bella had defended her or pissed that she'd done it publicly, such that Jessica now _couldn't_ take Mike to the dance without looking totally spineless. She didn't want to ask Eric—he just wasn't her type—and it would be disloyal to ask Tyler (sentenced to probation and community service) and thus risk a Girl Code breach with Lauren, not to mention the insult it would be against Bella to ask out the guy who almost killed her. For some reason, it didn't occur to Jessica that there were about 140 other boys in her school, most of whom would be thrilled to attend any kind of social event with her.

Like many power-nerds, Eric never went to school without a bottle of caffeine pills. He used them like John Belushi used cocaine in the seventies: with a total unawareness that excessive use of stimulants might be bad for you. He popped one about half an hour before the dismissal bell for much-needed courage.

"Hi Bella," he launched into his rehearsed speech the minute Bella appeared at her truck, "it's a lovely day isn't it you look really great today hey I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go to the Spring Formal with me?"

"Breathe," Bella ordered him kindly, amused but not allowing herself to laugh at him— he was a nice boy, he didn't have an overabundance of confidence when it came to girls, and she didn't believe in tearing down her fellow science nerds. "Thank you for asking, Eric, but I'm busy that night."

"Oh okay sorry to have bothered you have a nice afternoon!" And before he could do anything else to embarrass himself, Eric spirited away as fast as his scrawny legs would carry him. It was only moments later that he was cornered by Tyler Crowley, who proceeded to throw weak-ass punches because _he_ wanted to be the one to take Bella to the Spring Formal. Not because he cared about her, but because he wanted the local cops to stop eyeballing him, and he wanted his parents to stop giving him dirty looks whenever they drove him to whatever roadside he was cleaning up each Saturday. He wanted them to stop _driving_ him everywhere and let him get another car, but his mother was afraid he would pay for it with drug money, not understanding that he wasn't a dealer, or that now that he wasn't spending money on weed, he'd have car money. Somehow, the residual THC in Tyler's brain made him think taking out the chief's daughter would signal to the rest of the town that everything was good, and things could go back to normal.

Eric may have been a science nerd and an acne sufferer, but he was also a weight-lifter, if only in the privacy of his own home. His father had made a point of teaching him that while using that big brain of his was important for mankind, developing some upper body strength wouldn't go amiss on the road to becoming a man. Tyler only managed a couple of quick jabs before he realized his fists were meeting with enough resistance that he'd probably only succeed in knocking himself backward. Once he learned Bella had turned Eric down, Tyler began to have hope once more (though he wisely apologized for hitting Eric at all—everybody knew the nerds would rise up and become our Overlords someday, so it was best not push one's luck with the nerd-bashing).

Edward, hearing all this, laughed himself out of his hiding spot. While he was certain Bella would never, ever choose him over a human boy, hearing her reject everyone else was deeply satisfying. Gently swirling the contents of his cup, Edward made his way toward his car, thinking of how he could prolong his fun. A little parking lot traffic jam should be _just_ the thing.

Bella sighed, wondering what had gotten into everyone today, and climbed into her truck. Before she could shut her door, she felt her head sway, just a little. Something smelled…familiar. Only one scent in the world made her dizzy and nauseous.

Edward walked by at that exact moment, smiling. Sipping at a white Styrofoam cup. That did _not_ smell like coffee or soda.

Bella shut her door, the smell went away, and her eyes followed Edward as she absent-mindedly started her engine and pulled out of her parking space. She stared at his eyes in his rearview mirror as he stopped his car, but she didn't notice the way his little sister turned in her seat and stared at her with a strange frown, or the way Rosalie, Jasper, and Emmett cast bewildered looks at her, at the Volvo, and at each other. She didn't even notice Tyler tapping on her window in an effort to ask her to the dance before his dad came to pick him up—she almost ran him over, which would have served him right as far as everyone in the entire parking lot was concerned.

The only thing Bella could really see was a pattern. Absences. Harsh, pale faces. A distinct lack of appetite. Moving from one side of the parking lot to the other in the blink of an eye. Eyes changing color, not just his but his entire family's, and not just slowly over time but_ right in front of her_, not two hours ago.

The only thing she could feel was the cold, hard skin of Edward's hands grazing hers the one time in bio, and pulling her out of the way, cradling her almost lovingly, shoving Tyler's van so hard it rocked back on its own wheels…and not touching her again, even by accident. Ever.

The only thing she could smell was the contents of that cup. And Edward's mysterious girlfriend's perfume. But not _Edward._ He didn't have his own scent underneath—no body odor, no pheromones, no mouthwash, rarely ever anything like soap or shampoo, nothing. Except for once, the day of the accident, when he smelled like he'd been in the presence of an undomesticated animal.

The only thing Bella could hear as she pulled away from the school was not the faint shouting of Tyler, World Class Moron, and not her ancient car stereo with an old Styx cassette stuck in the tape deck (playing "Renegade," appropriately enough), but the sound of her own brain working.

"Well, I'll be damned."

* * *

**A/N: Going on hiatus for NaNoWriMo. More to come in December. Thanks for reading! Love you all!**


	10. You're My Obsession

**A/N: Sorry for the delay, folks. Let's get cracking, shall we?**

* * *

_Previously: Edward walked past Bella in the school parking lot with a cup o' blood and a bendy straw, like an **idiot.**_

_This is Forks,_ Bella thought.

Whenever Bella said something to the other kids about drive-by shootings, or crackheads, or gang wars, and asked them how they managed to avoid those problems here, she nearly always received an eye-roll or a bewildered stare, followed by the same refrain: _This is Forks. Stuff like that doesn't happen here._

And yet there was Edward, the source of every weird thing that had happened to her _since_ coming to Forks. Sipping at something in that white cup.

All the way to the Thriftway (it being grocery day), Bella felt as if she were in a waking dream. This was not a particularly safe mental state in which to be driving a truck during school dismissal hours _or_ pushing a metal basket when surrounded by young mothers and their runaway toddlers, but fortunately she didn't run over any innocent children.

_It can't be._

But she couldn't think of any possible, credible alternative.

_Aliens._

By the time she got home, Bella had nearly convinced herself that it just wasn't so, because This Was Forks, and Stuff Like That Didn't Happen Here. There were people, people not in high school, who she could ask about this, but that didn't mean asking was a good idea. Her dad would assume something was wrong with _her, _and modern scientists with even a halfway decent reputation didn't believe in extraterrestrials. None of the classically recognized signs were there. But then again, didn't those signs vary by sci-fi author anyway? And even if the broadly recognized traits were absent, there was still enough physical evidence to suggest that whatever Edward was, it wasn't normal. Or even human.

The problem with that was that the only person aware of said physical evidence was Bella. And what she had was probably circumstantial at best, at least without any proof of what happened to Tyler's van…

"The van."

Three phone calls and forty-five minutes later, Bella learned that the van had not only been totaled, it had been sold to a scrap metal company down in Aberdeen, who weren't in the habit of discussing their business with nosy teenage girls who should be doing their homework instead of pestering the receptionist about vehicles that had been crushed and recycled months ago.

So what did that leave, really? The Cullen family was relatively new in town, but two years was a long time for a family to still be shrouded in mystery. Surely the hospital director verified Dr. Cullen's previous employment or did some kind of background check before hiring him, just to make sure he wasn't some butcher. Only an idiot would hire a doctor off the street just because he walks in and says 'Hi, I'm Bob the doctor.' (She didn't realize that the hospital director really _was_ that big an idiot.) Background check or not, Doc Cullen had patched Bella up a couple of times since the accident, and the man obviously knew what he was doing. His credibility was covered, and the family's along with it, especially with some of them being in the foster care system.

As for the Boy Wonder himself…Edward's skin was paler than snow and abnormally hard—not proof of anything. He smelled funny—big deal. His eyes changed color—_ooh, scary._ He ran across the parking lot faster than a speeding van (or teleported, maybe?)—nobody saw it. Even Bella didn't really _see_ it so much as see him in one place one moment only to find him behind her the next, and she'd been covering for him ever since. (She knew she'd probably always do so, because she was alive when she should be rotting in the ground, and Edward was the only reason for that.)

But blood. For god's sake, the boy was drinking _blood._ Who _does_ that? Aside from that weird dude in the eighth grade who listened to too much Megadeth and liked wearing clothes with lots of unnecessary safety pins.

Then again, maybe Edward was just bleeding from somewhere. Bleeding, walking, and laughing. With a big Styrofoam cup in his hand. After getting nauseous in the middle of class for no apparent reason. And smelling like a lady.

_Crap! What if he's really a girl and he's on his period! Why didn't I think of it before? No boy is _that_ good-looking._

Bella shook her head. Of all the ridiculous…Edward didn't smell like a girl on her period—that was a completely different odor. He didn't even smell like he'd been _screwing_ a girl on her period. And he used the boys' locker room every day; she'd seen him exiting from the boys' side plenty of times. If there were _any_ doubts about his gender or his species, somebody would have told Bella that kind of gossip when she first moved to Forks. Hating on the Cullen clan was Mike's favorite lunchtime discussion topic. And Lauren's. And Jessica's, on occasion, though Bella suspected that had more to do with trying to fit in than any _real_ dislike toward the Cullens. But Mike definitely would have said something if he thought Edward was really a cross-dressing girl.

_Right,_ Bella thought with another shake of her head. _Edward Cullen is a bionic transvestite with non-pliable skin who keeps his/her blood in a Big Gulp cup._

The whole alien thing was starting to look more and more attractive. It sounded preposterous, but it made more sense than gender bending or something silly like a…a _vampire_ who spent his daylight hours at a _high school._ Not that a vampire was any more unlikely than an alien or a cross dresser; in point of fact there was much more historical documentation about vampires than men from other planets, and she went to school with cross dressers back in Phoenix. But this was Forks, for god's sake. Crap like that didn't happen here. A transvestite would get so much shit from these small town types, possibly even becoming the victim of a hate crime, and a vampire—no, scratch that, an entire _family_ of them—would surely have something better to do than ace a bunch of eleventh-grade biology quizzes, if they were even able to be awake during the day. But then, what would be an alien's excuse for leading such a mundane life?

Ludicrous. This entire line of reasoning was completely absurd. Clearly Bella had been in Forks too long, had read too many weird novels, and was overindulging her curiosity about the Cullen boy to compensate for the boredom. Rational people with a strong grounding in science did not add up a bunch of different smells and come up with an extraterrestrial vampire pre-op transsexual. If her mind was willing to go to such lengths just for some entertainment, maybe she really _should_ go live in Florida with Renee. Or at the very least, stop reading _Pride and Prejudice and Zombies_ and just read plain old _Pride and Prejudice._

Bella made dinner for Charlie (meatless dinner, since she'd forgotten to stop at Don Carlos) and spent her evening finishing the homework she'd neglected while calling around looking for Tyler's destroyed van. Her dad could see _rough day_ written all over her face, so he used his talking-someone-off-a-ledge voice when he reminded her that it would be his turn to host Poker Night this week, and he understood if she didn't want to hang around the house for it, but would she mind making those mini-kolaches out of Lil Smokies and crescent roll dough for the guys again?

"Yeah, sure," she agreed, rubbing her face. _Great._ "Nothing fuels testosterone like pork products."

Charlie gave her a contemplative look. "Is that what you had for lunch today right before you tore Mike Newton a new asshole?"

"Dad!" Bella yipped. "You _know_ about that?"

"Everybody does," Charlie said mildly. "No less than four people called the station to tell me all about it." With the exception of Mrs. Newton, who didn't understand the irony of complaining to Chief Swan that Bella had 'emasculated my baby,' the majority of the phone calls, e-mails, and drop-ins had been positive, even congratulatory. Even Jack, the town drunk, offered the chief a pat on the back before being escorted to his usual jail cell to sleep off his daily serving of Mad Dog 20/20.

"Am I in trouble?" Bella wanted to know. Because that would just be the _perfect_ ending to her day.

"Hell no," Charlie chuckled. "I'm just sorry nobody put it up on YouTube."

Bella wandered away to the shower before anything more embarrassing could happen. Because now that Charlie had actually uttered the words _YouTube,_ someone was bound to magically produce video footage of her making a spectacle of herself, even though nobody in the room had a video camera (that she knew of). _Way to show your ass, Bella._

She decided to meditate before bed like the hippie everyone in this backwoods town accused her mother of being when they thought Bella couldn't hear. Ironically, meditation was something Bella had learned to do on her own, just to realign herself in troubled times—Renee lacked the patience to sit still for so long. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had a verified Twitter account (no, seriously, look it up), and his Tweet for the day read: "Cultivating contentment is crucial to maintaining peaceful coexistence." Bella wanted to live a peaceful existence if she possibly could, and this was the best she could do without the support system she once had in place back in Phoenix. All she needed to do was redirect her mind.

Of course, instead of focusing on the things she actually intended to think about, like her home in the desert, she spent a good twenty minutes trying unsuccessfully to stop thinking about Edward. Finally she gave up and went to bed, not the least bit surprised when she saw him in her dreams. Again.

"_Edward, what was with you today?"_

"_I vanted to suck your blood."_

"_No, really."_

"_We do that on Planet Transylvania."_

"_Just tell me: you're a guy, right?"_

"_I have an Adam's apple, don't I?"_

"_Right! I forgot."_

"_Quite all right. What shall we do tonight?"_

"_Can we fly?"_

"_You always want to fly."_

"_Well, you're an alien. Or a vampire, maybe. Aren't you supposed to fly anyway?"_

"_Very well. Just let me put my cape on."_

"_The Superman cape, or the Dracula cape?"_

"_Just as you please, Bella…"_

"_Edward, this is beautiful."_

"_The Painted Desert was an excellent choice."_

"_It's my favorite part of Arizona. See how the rock contains its own rainbow? I missed all the reds and browns. Everything in Forks is too green."_

"_You're not looking hard enough. The seasons are changing now. Go hiking soon, and I'll show you a different kind of rainbow."_

"_Where are you going? Edward, please stay. It's so lonely here. I just want to talk to you."_

"_You want to do much more than that."_

"_Maybe I do. Don't you?"_

"_Hush, hush. Thought I heard you calling my name now."_

"_Edward, wait."_

"_You're much too young to remember that song, Bella."_

"_So are you."_

"_Am I? Then why do I remember it?"_

"_Edward, I don't understand…Consuela? What are __**you**__ doing here?"_

Abruptly, Bella sat up in bed. After rubbing the dried rheum from her eyes, she realized three things: 1) Edward knew _exactly_ when "Hush" was recorded, even though he claimed not to like it (Bella didn't even know how old that song was); 2) her room was colder than she liked—no doubt from Charlie trying to save on the heating bill; and 3) she could still smell Edward, as though he (or Consuela the heavily-perfumed Phoenix Transit Station prostitute) lingered from her dream.

The digital clock on her dresser cast a green glow across the room. Three in the freaking morning. Aggravated with herself, Bella flopped back on her bed and hummed to herself. Before long she was asleep again, this time dreaming of her mother's voice singing a slow, soft version of "Crazy Train." It was always Renee's most soothing lullaby.

Approximately two hours later, a bewildered but ultimately love-struck Edward climbed out of Bella's closet.

* * *

"Where have _you_ been all night?" Rosalie demanded the moment Edward walked in to change for school.

Edward said nothing. He and Rosalie both knew whose smell was on Edward's clothes. She just wanted to pick a fight, and he wasn't in the mood to give her the satisfaction.

Alice, at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, felt like celebrating. Not only had Edward taken an actual step forward, he'd managed to not kill her new best friend! And she could see that he planned to go back! Wonderful!

Jasper, as was so often the case, was the one who could sense how genuinely conflicted Edward was. He thought about offering Edward a listening ear, just because he knew this was difficult for the poor kid. But Jasper did not approve of Edward sneaking into the girl's home—it was much too dangerous, too tempting and needlessly risky after all Edward's claims of the unbearable thirst Bella generated—so Jasper chose to remain neutral rather than supportive.

Jasper wasn't alone in feeling this way. Edward had told himself those very things all the way to Bella's house the night before. But even so, his feet carried him over the river, through the woods, into the path of a deer that served as a snack, across the highway, through some more woods, and into Bella's front yard.

"This is wrong," he muttered to himself when he got there. "Disturbing, illegal, and wrong." And yet he could not make himself look away. The fact that he resisted the urge to peek in the girl's bedroom for a full hour before he scaled the exterior wall and did it anyway was of little consolation. "I'm sorry," he whispered to the girl fast asleep on the other side of the glass. "I'm so sorry. I don't want to ruin your life. I just want to see you one last time, and then I'll go."

That was the plan, actually: take his farewell of the girl, then leave town. As far as he was concerned, he had a damn good reason to do this. From the precise moment Bella had turned down the last of three guys for the Spring Formal, Alice's visions had gone completely haywire. Not only was her favorite still-frame of Bella and Edward smiling at each other back in the picture, but so were at least half a dozen conflicting, often unrelated impressions of the widest, wildest variety, some lasting no more than a moment before they vanished from possibility. Bella talking excitedly on the phone to people unknown (actually, in that vision she was trying to get ahold of one of those crackpot "scientists" from the History Channel who say aliens visited Earth in prehistoric times, but thank god she dismissed that idea immediately, because those people have no respect for the scientific method). She saw Bella walking through the woods alone, carrying a brightly burning torch. Charlie taking Bella to see a psychologist. Mike Newton (what the hell?) making some excuse to check Edward out in the shower at school (again: what the hell?). Edward not just smiling down at Bella, but _kissing_ her. Bella hopping on a plane to Florida, and Edward following her on the next plane after that. Edward standing around like a moron while Bella scowled up at him with her hands on her hips, obviously telling him off. Bella dead in his arms. And did she mention the _kissing?_

Within two hours Alice's visions had settled down (not before giving Edward what he was certain a coronary infarction felt like), but that didn't make them clear. She blamed it on some vague indecision Bella must have been feeling. Alice had to give Bella fair credit: she mucked up the future more thoroughly in two hours than Edward had in two months.

But Alice and Edward were different in one respect—she was about the big picture and sometimes overlooked small things she should have factored in, whereas he generally got bogged down by the details to the detriment of his primary goal. That was why things tended to work out more smoothly when they cooperated with each other instead of pitting themselves against each other. In this case, rather than ask himself why all these futures suddenly came into the realm of possibility or why they blinked back out, Edward chose to focus on the death part. Of _course._

"Just tell me," he begged his tiny sister. "Will she still be alive tomorrow?" To him, that _was_ the biggest picture. The only one that mattered.

"Well you're still standing right here, and nobody _else_ is planning on killing her," Alice replied, mentally adding _dipshit._

That was enough for Edward. He'd been in Forks long enough now that no one would be suspicious if he left (or so he thought). Better to go far away and look back on his memories of Bella with sadness for what could never be than to stay and turn her life into a three-ring circus with a gruesome, bloody finale. (Something in him decided she would approve of that macabre description.) But he would not be the cause of all this turmoil for her—and he was certain he was the cause. Which was how he wound up in her front yard at midnight on a Wednesday night, promising the wind that he would leave in just a few more minutes.

He was almost done burning her sleeping face into his memory in typical angsty fashion when he heard her voice. "Please, not another casserole, Mom."

She sounded so thoroughly repulsed and world-weary, Edward would have almost believed her to be awake had she not been talking about food in the middle of the night to a mother who lived across the country. But more interesting than that, more tempting than the lure of uncensored thoughts, was the way a single word from this girl's mouth triggered a visceral reaction in Edward.

Casserole.

_He was eleven years old, just coming in from a brief shooting excursion with his elder cousin—he had a cousin!—and his mother sat on her chaise stroking their pet cat and reading her brand new book, _How to Cook Casserole Dishes._ "Mother?" he asked from the doorway, forgetting to beg her pardon first but remembering not to step even one toe into the parlor—children were not allowed there. "I bagged seven birds today. Cook sent me to ask how you'd like them prepared."_

"_That's wonderful, darling," Elizabeth praised him, though she did not look up from her book right away. "What sort of birds?"_

"_Pigeon," he answered dutifully._

_His mother's bright green eyes lit up, and she gave him a beautiful smile. "I found a recipe for Pigeons en Casserole just today! Tell Cook I'll be with her in just a moment."_

Eager for more, Edward pressed his face closer to the glass, hoping Bella would say something else. He didn't remember having a cousin, or what that cousin's name might be, and it was impossible to hope he'd recall it tonight, but maybe next time… But there wasn't supposed to _be_ a next time. There was only tonight, and then he was leaving Forks. Tonight was all he had.

Against his better judgment, Edward gulped down some fresh air, gently lifted the sash, and slid into the open window. He left the window open only an eighth of an inch, just in case.

The rocking chair in the corner of her room seemed almost an invitation for a voyeur—why did a teenage girl _have_ a rocking chair in her room anyway, and why was it positioned just so? It didn't face out the window, but rather inward, giving him a direct line of sight to Bella's sleeping face as he sat down. She looked so…annoyed. But happy. Whatever was annoying her, she must have been fond of it. Probably not a casserole; her mother, perhaps? He waited, listening as she cycled through her nightly dreams. Some of them weren't in English, and he couldn't immediately identify the language until he remembered the pretty Star of David she'd worn to school. _Hebrew._ Or possibly Yiddish. Two of many languages he didn't speak—with somewhere between six and seven thousand languages in the world, a little less than a century of vampirism hadn't been enough time to master _all_ of them. Still, this new discovery answered some of his long-held questions about Bella, even as it opened up new ones.

"…too green…" she muttered eventually, back to English again.

_Very_ odd, Edward decided. In this day and age of tree-hugging, save-the-planet, corporate hippiedom, he didn't think there was such a thing as "too green." He was just about to make up a truly entertaining scenario in which Bella told an entire commune that bathing regularly wouldn't kill off the sea turtles when she said something that caught him completely off guard.

"Edward, please stay."

The effect of this small, innocent request was immediate.

In his legendary novel _The Godfather, _Mario Puzo described the way a Sicilian man falls in love as "being hit by the thunderbolt." It's not sweet, nor innocent, nor even intentional; it fills the body, casts it into overwhelming confusion, makes you _alive._ It's primal, passionate, and possessive, and more than a little chauvinistic in this day and age, but it's real, consuming, and above all, _unbreakable_. Rather like a vampire finding an irresistible flavor that sings to him, actually.

Edward wasn't Sicilian. He had no blood of his own rushing through his veins. He was not technically alive, nor was he a chauvinist (that he knew of). But he was struck nonetheless. The crush he'd been hiding from was replaced with something else that made him more human than he'd ever been, even before his death. He didn't know if he was in love with Bella or with the way she made him feel. All he knew was that his body was afire all over again, like being born, and that he wasn't going anywhere, not to some faraway country or a neighboring state or even the next town over, unless this girl would be there, too.

"Edward, wait," Bella called, stirring.

It was with all the superhuman control he could muster that he didn't leap right out of his seat, take this girl into his arms exactly as he had in the school parking lot when he saved her life, and claim her for his own. Not as a vampire, but as a man dizzy with a love he's never felt before and may never feel again for anyone else. He could only allow himself one luxury, which was actually a necessity if he wanted to build up a tolerance to Bella Swan's presence without ravishing her in the worst of ways rather than the best. With his muscles locked in place, he let himself inhale.

_Feel the burn._

Locking those muscles turned out to be a bad idea—he was scarcely prepared, only moments later, to make himself vanish into the closet when Bella said so clearly, "Consuela? What are _you_ doing here?" and startled herself awake.

_For the love of heaven,_ he thought, remembering the first time he ever smelled her and caught her doodling someone's name in her biology notebook, _who in God's name is Consuela?_

xXxXx

When Bella woke again in the morning, the first thing she did was yawn. The second thing she did was sniff the air. The third thing she did was follow her nose to the closet, which held only her clothes.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me."

When she got downstairs a few minutes later, Bella asked Charlie if Mark the K-9 guy needed a dog sitter for Izzy for the weekend. Then she fished some unscented clothing out of the dryer to wear for the day.


	11. They Just Effed With the Wrong Jew

**A/N: Ha! You weren't expecting another chapter so soon, were you!**

* * *

They Just Fucked With the Wrong Jew

_Previously: Bella woke up and smelled whore perfume in her room. Seriously, Edward, take a bath._

"Bella, I want you to carry this."

"Pepper spray?"

"Law enforcement _grade_ pepper spray. That's my own can. I know you think it's lame and that you won't need it, but it'll make me feel better if you have it. "

"Don't I need to have training to use this?"

"Well, you don't _have_ to, but I did, and so did all my guys. We can use it more effectively if we have experience with it."

"Was the training mandatory?"

"…Yes."

"So what you're saying is, you want me to have this, but you're not going to teach me the proper way to use it."

"It's not exactly complicated. Look, all you have to do is point this part at your attacker and press this button on the top."

"Like this?"

"Christ, girl, don't spray it right now!"

"Why not?"

"We're inside the house! That stuff will get everywhere, and then we'll both have reactions to it. It's not for seasoning your scrambled eggs."

"Okay, let's take it outside this evening so I can practice."

"If we do that, you won't have enough left in your canister."

"But you said experience breeds familiarity."

"I didn't say that."

"You meant it."

"Whatever. Look, this shoots at a distance of—"

"I don't want it."

"Bella, please don't argue with me. You might think it's unnecessary, but—"

"But it'll make you feel better, I know. The thing is, it's kind of like giving me a rabbit's foot for all the good it'll do."

"Ah, but a rabbit's foot won't scare anyone."

"Neither will an itty bitty cylinder on my key chain. You need to rethink why you're giving me this, Charlie. Either the goal is to intimidate the enemy, or to incapacitate him."

"The enemy?"

"The attacker. The assailant. The creepy stalker. Whatever. If you're giving me something to frighten an attacker away, then you need to give me something that's not subtle. Like a machete."

"That's _never_ going to happen. You're not Danny Trejo*."

"It's a rhetorical example. As I was saying, intimidation only works if I pose an obvious threat, thereby making me a less desirable target. If you want me to incapacitate an attacker who is already coming at me, then you need to give me something I can actually use."

"Like what?"

"Like your service weapon."

"Jesus!"

"Let's not bring him into it."

"Bella, you're seventeen; I am not giving you a gun, not even a small one. It's illegal."

"Technically, don't I have to be eighteen to have the pepper spray?"

"No, you're over fourteen and have my permission. But you have to be twenty-one to be licensed to carry a concealed handgun."

"Okay, what else you got?"

"What?"

"I can't carry a gun, and this pepper spray is useless. What else do you have in the proverbial black bag?"

"Bella, pepper spray isn't useless."

"Humor me."

"You want to run down the list? Fine. Knives are effective, but you can't carry one and it takes time and practice to learn knife-fighting anyway. Nunchuks and throwing stars—again, time and practice, not to mention a sensei. Brass knuckles are illegal. Harpoons are too big. Bow and arrow take too long to operate, they're long-range only, and you can't carry a quiver of arrows _and_ a backpack. Napalm is easy to make, but it's _very_ illegal. Shall I go on, or are you getting the picture?"

"Dad, how do you know how to make _napalm?_"

"I'm not illiterate, Bella—I know things."

"Yeah, but _why_…nevermind. None of that stuff would work anyway."

"Work on _who?_ What on earth do you think is going to attack you, a mutant bear? Goddamn SyFy channel."

"No, Dad! I just mean…I could get carjacked or assaulted by a large group or something. What if some anti-Semites see me coming from Shabbat service, and I'm the victim of a hate crime?"

"You frighten me, child."

"It's a rough world we live in, Dad."

"This is _Forks,_ Bella."

"Yeah, yeah, This-is-Forks-stuff-like-that-doesn't-happen-here. Except that I won't spend every second of every day in this town. I drive to Port Angeles once or twice a month, I've been meaning to check out the mall down in Aberdeen, and I'd like to visit Seattle in the near future. You get the picture."

"Let it never be said that you didn't learn some street smarts growing up in Phoenix. But I'm still not giving you a gun."

"I've got an idea. What about a stun gun?"

"…"

"Dad?"

"The projectile kind, or the close-range-only kind?"

"Whatever's legal in Washington."

"It's governed by municipality in Washington. You wouldn't be able to carry one in certain cities."

"Can I take one with me to Port Angeles?"

"As long as you don't use it to commit a crime."

"Seattle?"

"They don't have any anti-Taser laws that I know of. But just in case, don't take it with you onto school property, and definitely don't carry it in a courthouse or a liquor store."

"Seriously Dad, why would I be at a liquor store? Wait, is that a yes?"

"I have rules."

"Yes! I mean, yes, rules, of course you do."

"You've got to practice using it. I'll find you a volunteer target. Either somebody who wants to get out of a felony, or maybe an animal scheduled for destruction."

"Dad!"

"You're the one who said the thing about experience and familiarity, Bella. It's important that you have an understanding of what you have in your hands so that you'll respect it and what it can do to people. It's not _nearly_ the same thing as giving someone sore eyes and a skin rash."

"Got it, respect and practice. Anything else?"

"No showing it off to your friends. It is not a status symbol, nor is it a cool toy."

"Understood."

"You can't have a projectile stunner—those don't work if you don't aim properly, and I imagine it's been a long time since you've practiced shooting anything. Besides, they're too bulky and cumbersome."

"That's fine. I'm probably too slow to spot an attacker until he's almost on me anyway, the stealthy bastard."

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, should I get the baton kind?"

"Lord, no. I'll get you the kind that's disguised as a cellular phone."

"Excellent. Thank you, Daddy!"

"Yeah, well…keep it charged and take good care of it, because it's going to take care of you."

"Yes, Dad. Oh, and I have a few questions."

"Such as?"

"It rains a lot here. Will I get electrocuted if I'm standing in a puddle or if the guy is wet?"

"Nope. It's a localized effect. What else?"

"Will it kill a dog if I'm being chased by one?"

"Not a large dog, but don't use it on little yappy dogs. You should know that this kind of Taser only works up close, so you're better off using the pepper spray from a distance in that situation."

"Noted. How many volts can I get?"

"Pardon?"

"Is there a legal limit on voltage?"

"No, why do you ask?"

"I just figure if I get stopped or something, and I'm not in Forks, a cop will let me slide if I'm inside the legal limits on voltage."

"Again I say: you frighten me."

"Well I don't want to kill anybody with it!"

"That won't happen unless you stun someone with a preexisting medical condition or certain drugs in their system."

"Really? Even if I use a million volts?"

"Even if it has _several_ million volts. You know why stun guns are considered 'less lethal' weapons?"

"Why?"

"Because voltage doesn't kill a man, amperage does."

"Oh, _really_?"

"Stun guns are designed to disrupt the nervous system and incapacitate an attacker long enough for you to get away or cuff the bastard. Higher voltage just means it works faster to achieve the same effect, but the amperage on these things is much too low to kill a human being. You'd need one full amp of power, and stunners only have one to three milliamps. That's also why you won't get shocked if your attacker is touching you."

"One full amp, you say. How do you know so much about this stuff?"

"Tried to convince the mayor they'd be a good investment for the department. 'Fred' I told him, 'we have to stop the assailant either way. The conditions under which we're allowed to fire a Taser are no less stringent than those that govern firing our duty weapons. The difference is that with a Taser, there's a better chance of a prosecution, while with a gun, there's a greater likelihood of a funeral.'"

"And he turned your proposal down?"

"Yep."

"What an idiot."

"That's exactly what I said. That's why I didn't get a raise that year."

"So when do I get one?"

"A raise?"

_"Dad."_

"I've got a catalog in my office. I'll place the order during their business hours."

"Good. The sooner, the better."

"Bella, is something wrong?"

"No, why?"

"Don't 'why' me, young lady. Yesterday you chewed out a boy who's been flirting with you for two months, and today you came down the stairs asking if you could babysit a _police dog._ You don't even like dogs."

"I like Izzy; she's sweet. And I thought Mark might want to go visit his family or something. I know you gave him this weekend off. Wait, did he get a girlfriend?"

"Don't try to sidetrack me. Why are you so anxious to get your hands on a stunner?"

"You're the one who approached me with a bottle of pepper spray that can only be used outdoors."

"Has someone been following you around?"

"No."

"Because I can think of at least ten different grounds to arrest somebody without needing a warrant, and none of them have to lead back to you."

"_No._ I just figure since you're all worried, maybe I should be, too."

"I wasn't trying to worry you."

"It's okay, Dad. Just…I'm planning to go to Port Angeles again soon for Purim."

"I wish you'd just go to the Spring dance instead."

"Dad. I already told you—"

"I know, I know, cultural heritage, unity, your favorite holiday. I'll pay for priority shipping so that you get the stunner before then."

"Thank you. I feel better."

"Well that makes _one_ of us. On the whole, I think I would have felt better if you'd just taken the pepper spray, especially if you're expecting a _gang_."

"Right up until a cluster of crackheads laughs at me and keeps coming because they can't feel the peppery pain."

"_Bella_. We do not. Live. In a _ghetto_."

"Love you, Dad. Now go on, or we'll both be late today."

"Thanks. Just…do me a favor and keep the pepper spray handy until the stunner comes in."

"Will do. Bye Charlie."

_Beep-beep-beep…beep-beep…beep…beep!_

_Ring…ring…_

"Hello?"

"Hi, is Eric there?"

"This is Eric. Who's calling?"

"It's Bella. Bella Swan."

"Bella? Um, hi. Are you okay?"

"Of course I am."

"You sound...you don't sound too happy."

"I have a favor to ask, if it's not too much trouble."

"Uh, sure. Do you need a ride to school or something?"

"You said the other day that you built your own computer from scratch, right?"

"Yeah, and my mom's, too. Me and Radio Shack are like _this._ Why, do you need some tech support?"

"Not exactly. I was just wondering…do you know how to manipulate the electrical components of other stuff, too?"

* * *

*Danny Trejo is the star of the Robert Rodriguez film _Machete._ Its tagline is "They just fucked with the wrong Mexican," hence the title.


	12. Parsnips

__

_Previously: Edward snuck in to Bella's room to listen to her talk in her sleep. He felt really guilty about it, but he also realized he was in love. Which he thinks makes it okay, for some reason._

* * *

From Midnight Sun Chap. 6 and Twilight Chap. 5 "Blood Type"

Parsnips

"I've decided that today I'm going to talk to her." Five hours of staring at Bella's face in her room for the first time (although probably not the last) had given Edward enough courage to make this decision, at least. "I just don't know what to say," he sighed.

Carlisle, Esme, and Alice exchanged glances. Carlisle didn't like getting so involved in this, but he was well aware of the likelihood that Esme and Alice would go overboard and give unrealistic advice, so he felt a level head was needed. Besides, he was the only Cullen besides Edward himself who'd ever had an actual conversation with Bella. In point of fact, he'd treated her several times since the accident (always injuries as a result of a fall, which would have made him suspect child abuse if Edward hadn't already mentioned her tendency to fall at school). Not that these repeat visits made Carlisle an expert on her personality; all he really knew was that she wasn't a wimp about pain, nor was she grossed out by medical talk. Hardly useful or even pertinent information, and yet he deliberately had not shared it with anyone.

Dr. Cullen made a point of never discussing his patients with his family in an effort to protect their privacy, unless of course a case was giving him particular trouble and he needed a fresh perspective. But with Bella, his silence was less a matter of maintaining doctor-patient confidentiality and more a matter of not driving his son insane by thinking about the girl Edward was already preoccupied with. Alice and Esme did quite enough of that, and it had failed to accomplish anything thus far.

Even so, Carlisle realized that perhaps he _should_ have spoken to his son about Bella or about women in general long before today, when Esme said:

"You've been listening to three couples seduce each other for ninety some-odd years, and you don't know how to talk to a girl?"

Edward made a disgusted face. "First of all, you don't know how hard I've been trying _not_ to listen to that for all these years. Second, she's not a vampire. I doubt she'd be receptive to blood play. And third, I'm not trying to bed the girl; I just want to have a civilized conversation."

Alice rolled her eyes. It always made her look a bit like a computer animated character when she did that, as her eyes were too large for her tiny face. "I realize we're all technically dead, but are you brain dead, too? She's a woman; tell her she's pretty."

"Do you even remember the Women's Liberation movement?" Edward asked his sister. "I don't think that's going to cut it with this girl."

"Now, now, Alice," Carlisle said smoothly. "Fair words butter no parsnips."

Carlisle had been saying that for over three hundred and fifty years. Nobody understood why he continued to use expressions that were so archaic; he claimed he liked the way they sounded. Loosely translated, his parsnip metaphor meant 'Flattery accomplishes nothing.' Given that a parsnip loosely resembled a white, engorged carrot, the phrase took on a suggestive connotation in the current context, whether Carlisle meant it that way or not.

"I don't know, dear," Esme replied, sounding a little brusque. "I could stand to hear compliments a little more often."

Alice paused to check the future (because she couldn't go ten minutes into any conversation without doing so) and saw that Carlisle wasn't going to overcome his nuptial dry spell any time soon. Jasper, on the other hand, made it a point to tell Alice she was beautiful only an hour ago, and tonight _he_ would be getting a—

"Alice, _please,_" Edward hissed. "Not to sound like a self-absorbed bastard, but could we focus on me for a minute, rather than everyone else's sexual activities?"

"You checked for _that?_" Esme placed a hand on her hip exactly the way her first husband used to do when he was irritated with something she did, though Esme didn't consciously remember it. "My private activities are none of your business, young lady." The _young lady_ bit was silly—Alice and Esme were turned in the same decade—but Esme couldn't seem to break the habit of using that term after decades of chastising Rosalie the same way.

"Private," Alice scoffed. Even without taking into account all the extra-sensory gifts that made knowing each other's business a foregone conclusion, there was no such thing as privacy in the Cullen house. Alice felt she and Jasper would have been quite happy living in their own home _nearby,_ rather than having everyone essentially right on top of each other day in and day out. It was the need to lie about their ages that forced them all to share a house for roughly four years out of every ten, which she could understand, but it was Esme herself who kept insisting on having her children live with her post-graduation when any other parent with her kind of money would have been shipping them off to college. Alice didn't mind this either because she loved her family, but to a vampire's ears most nights sounded like an immortal orgy, even with all the soundproofing in the walls. There was no getting around it short of leaving the house to have sex, which just wasn't practical on a daily basis. So if Esme had a problem with everyone else knowing that she and Carlisle hadn't made love in nearly a month, it was really no one else's fault but her own. "Privacy is an illusion in this house," Alice pointed out.

"Courtesy _isn't_ an illusion," Esme reprimanded her daughter, all set to begin a long-familiar lecture on the difference between knowing something and openly acknowledging it in public.

"Yes it is!" Emmett chimed in, passing through the kitchen on his way to the garage. "Courtesy is a freaking charade here—we're always a breath away from all-out war because we can't stop offending each other. Eddie-boy, if your human gives you the time of day, tell her that tape deck in her truck sucks donkey balls, and she needs a stereo system made in this century. Can we go to school now, or what? Rose, Jasper, and I have a Tesla coil experiment in physics lab today, and we have to get there early if we want to sabotage it properly without frying ourselves."

Edward, sensing that he wasn't going to get a good answer to his simple question by talking to anyone in his home, snatched up his car keys and left the house without saying goodbye. Alice followed before her faux-parents tried to ban the other two married couples from having any "buttered parsnips." Meanwhile, Esme and Carlisle were busy bickering over whether a compliment from Carlisle would actually mean anything now that Esme made it clear she was expecting one.

The drive to school didn't help any, either. Alice silently fed Edward some compliments that she was sure Bella would appreciate, because she figured Bella was probably just as insecure about her appearance as any other girl her age. Rosalie swore a lot—for such a well-bred upper middle class 1930's-era debutante, she had a mouth on her that would scare off a modern-day Marine. Emmett, being Emmett, speculated how much longer it would be before Edward ruined everything and they all had to move to Idaho or something. Jasper mostly scowled to himself, though his thoughts made it clear that he disapproved of Edward pursuing the human girl, even as a friend. Not just because of the potential for a fatal mistake, but because it was obvious to him that Edward had no idea how to be a real friend, let alone a good boyfriend. _Friends don't sneak into each other's bedrooms without permission and spend half the night watching them sleep. I barely remember being human, and even I know that much. What's the matter with you?_

For a quiet car trip, it was fairly loud for Edward. By the time he parked the Volvo, he concluded that his entire family was going to be utterly useless for the remainder of the day. He'd taken his time getting to school, but Bella was still running a bit late, and he worried for her.

"She'll be here," Alice reassured him as the others climbed out of the car. "I can see her coming in ten more minutes." _By the way, remember to skip biology today. _

"What? Why?"

_Blood-typing. Hello?_

This came as a surprise, and it was rare that anything ever surprised Edward Cullen. At least until this damned intoxicating girl came along.

Alice found his reaction amusing. _I guess you were too preoccupied to read Banner's mind yesterday._

"Maybe we should have skipped school altogether," Edward fretted. "For some reason this town has a lot of hemophiliacs, and they've all been marrying each other for a hundred years. There are sure to be a lot of bleeders wandering the campus. It'll be like platters of hors d'oeuvres floating around."

"And you think _I'm_ prone to exaggeration." Alice shook her head at him. "No excuses, big brother. You're ditching tomorrow for a hunting trip, and you've already missed seven days this semester. You simply can't afford an absence today." Actually, he couldn't afford any more at all—they hadn't even reached the sunny season yet, and even with falsified doctor's notes and the occasional sweet-talking session with Mrs. Cope, he was two unexcused absences away from legally obligating the school to file a truancy petition with juvenile court.

With a playful poke at her brother's side, Alice added, "I wouldn't want you to miss out on talking to Bella."

As his sister left him to join the others inside the school, Edward tried to think of the best way to approach Bella. Maybe surprise her by her truck? Catch her keys if they slipped from her hands? Perhaps, since the whole three-guys-asking-her-to-the-dance-on-the-same-day incident was still fresh, he could find a way to make a joke of it. Women liked men with a sense of humor, didn't they? That would be perfect. He might even work in something about having people-cooking skills, in case she mentioned New Guinea again. Wouldn't that be _hilarious?_ Edward, listener to a thousand thoughts, somehow missed the part where girls who otherwise enjoyed a good joke did not necessarily appreciate one at their own expense.

But as it turned out, Bella wasn't in the best mood to put up with teasing when she arrived at school. Edward watched as her truck lumbered into the lot only a few minutes before the tardy bell rang. She seemed to be grumbling about something, but he couldn't tell what it was beyond the foreign word _benzona_, and of course he couldn't see into her mind.

In point of fact, she was swearing (_benzona_ being Hebrew for _son of a whore)._ Bella was upset because a) she knew she'd been visited at night, and by whom, but she also had sense enough to know that if he really wanted to get in again, there was nothing she could do to stop him, not with his strength, stealth, and speed (or teleportation, though she was pretty sure it was speed); b) having the Taser conversation with her dad made her late for school, and c) as a direct result of her visitor spending so long in her closet, she was going to have to rewash all her clothes to get the cheap hooker smell out, even the ones she'd just washed two days before. Thank god he hadn't rifled through her underwear drawer.

Edward appeared in front of her truck and said 'good morning,' earning a suspicious glare and a reluctant hello for his trouble. Bella didn't drop her keys—she slid them individually into the spaces between her fingers, so that when she made a fist, they were like little metal knuckle-spikes. His smiles elicited no response. His humorous attempt to ask her out didn't pan out so well, either.

"I was wondering if, a week from Saturday…you know, the day of the dance…"

Instead of rising to the bait or gratifying him with a shocked expression, Bella kept her face forward, still walking.

Bella Swan was not a coward. She refused to let some jackoff take her away from the life she was trying to live. That was why she was in school today rather than hiding out at home. (It also occurred to her, when she was debating the merits of truancy, that school was the safest place for her to be because it was packed with witnesses.) It was not out of fear that she took her time formulating a response; not entirely. She _wanted_ to tell Edward Cullen to back the fuck off before she electrocuted his balls until they fell off and she shoved them down his throat. But since she didn't actually have the means to carry out such a threat, at least not _yet,_ she coughed and replied (with a colossal effort at calculated civility), "If I catch another chill like the one I got today, I don't think I'll be going anywhere next Saturday. My room was _freezing_ when I got up this morning."

In an uncharacteristic display of wisdom and restraint, rather than try to guess what topics would be best avoided in conversation, Edward decided to not bother her any longer as she hurried off to her first class. The last thing he wanted to do was anger her when clearly her day was already off to a bad start. He abandoned his plan to invite her to a lunch table and made a mental note to cover Bella up with an extra blanket if he ever went into her room again, or at the very least to close the window properly. Because that's what a girl really wants in a stalker: a little consideration for the ambient temperature.

The day dragged on for Edward, who could only think of how stupid he was for letting Bella's room get cold and jeopardizing her health. He spent an inordinate amount of time debating the likelihood that she would contract pneumonia or whooping cough or, Lord help him, the galloping consumption. This just went to show how terrible he was about taking a frightening thought and running with it—galloping consumption was an old-timey phrase for tuberculosis, which was hardly something anyone could catch just from a chill.

But for Bella a sore throat was the least of her worries; there was much to consider. Privately, she had to admit to being a _little_ flattered that Edward would want to be around her, but mostly she was creeped out and worried. What if he touched her while she slept, and she didn't even know it?

_No_, her heart whispered (a thing she was altogether unfamiliar with, except when it came to Edward). _I'd know if he had. His touch lasts long after he's gone._

Bella shook her head, accidentally insulting her English teacher by unintentionally disagreeing with his analysis of Macbeth when really she was just trying to stop thinking foolish thoughts. It didn't matter if Edward's touch made her feel things she'd never felt before, and it didn't matter that she'd already been nursing a private crush on him. Breaking into her house to hang out in her closet while she slept (_if_ that's all he was doing in there) was _so not cool_.

"Asshole," she muttered to herself. Really, where did he get off waltzing into someone else's house—into the _police chief's daughter's bedroom—_in the middle of the night? The more she thought about the situation, the angrier she got. And the hotter she felt her face growing, the less she cared about putting up a front in public and the more she wanted to march right up to Edward and shove her foot right up his inhuman, night-stalking ass.

But just as her last morning class was about to let out, and most of the students were already beginning to talk, laugh, and shove notebooks into backpacks, Bella stopped thinking of herself and noticed the longing expression on Angela's face and the direction of her gaze.

"I'll bet I can guess what you're thinking about," Bella commented, dredging up a hint of playfulness. Ben Cheney sat three rows away and two desks forward, oblivious. "You know, just staring at him isn't going to make anything happen." (Edward, who of course was eavesdropping on the conversation via Angela's mind, renewed his plan to invite Bella to a secluded lunch table.)

"Who knows," Angela replied, "maybe in a way every relationship begins with a stalker."

Bella mulled this over. Her mother was always telling her "Look at things from the other side," and this had always been good advice. Edward, no matter what exactly he was, was clearly not a regular human being. Obviously he was hiding something, but it seemed that now he was also trying to reach out, if his sudden chattiness was a reliable indicator. What would a non-human know about proper human interaction, anyway, especially one who lived in a household that didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the foster children dating the adopted children? Did he suffer from some kind of autism spectrum disorder on top of everything else? That much seemed plausible at least—he had yet to master the basic structure of a normal conversation. She kind of liked that about him, though. To be honest, five minutes of ribbing each other about Deep Purple yesterday was the highlight of her day. That was why she liked dreaming about him at night.

And when it came right down to it, hadn't she been sort of stalking him, too? Trying to figure him out for the last couple of months was hardly the mark of neutrality or disinterest. True, Bella didn't cross the line from infatuation into law breaking. But maybe every relationship _did_ begin with a stalker, and maybe it was her.

"Where'd you hear that?" she asked her friend.

"Oh! It's from book I'm reading," Angela answered, realizing too late that she'd given herself away.

"What kind of book?" Bella asked, wondering if it was worth reading, and if it might provide more insight into whatever was going on with Edward (or even within herself).

Angela became even more self-conscious. "I don't know if you'd like it. It's like a cross between an epic poem and a horror comic, but without the artwork."

Bella smiled. "I like to keep an open mind when it comes to books. What's it called?"

Angela waited out the five-second ringing of the lunch bell before she answered. "_Sharp Teeth._ It's about werewolves."

_Great,_ Bella mused, frowning to herself as everyone rose from their seats and left the classroom. _Frickin' werewolves. Yet another myth to worry about actually coming true. _She ruled it out almost immediately, though. Even if she could suspend her disbelief long enough to allow for the possibility of lycanthropy, after sitting beside Edward for two months straight, she was one hundred percent certain that he did _not_ smell like a dog.

She was so wrapped up in all her speculations, crackpot theories, and mostly forgotten memories of her brief goth phase back when she was thirteen (to say nothing the confused jumble that was her feelings), that her friends had to poke her in the back to remind her to get some food from the lunch line she was standing in. She settled on a bottle of lemonade and was handing over her money when she noticed Edward waving her over.

Or rather, flagging her down like an idiot.

Edward had tried subtlety, beckoning her over with just his index finger and a wink. But as far as he could tell, she either didn't notice or didn't particularly like the whole 'come hither, my pet' approach. (He didn't realize it, but it was actually fortunate that Bella hadn't noticed the finger-beckon-with-a-wink bit, because not only would she have given him an ugly look and walked away, she would also have immediately called her father from the principal's office and told him everything.) So Rico Suave tried a friendly wave instead. Nothing. Finally he had to resort to being obvious and making a fool of himself, which certainly got Bella's attention, but also attracted the attention of no less than forty-five other students and the silent spurn of three quarters of his siblings (and a mental thumbs-up from Alice).

_The things I do for love,_ Edward sighed to himself when Bella finally met his eyes. Then again, judging by her expression, this probably wasn't going to work as a seduction. She looked like she might be ready to tell him off.

Still, it didn't hurt to start things off as nice and friendly as possible. "I was thinking you could sit with me today," he said when she approached him, though he didn't use his Enticement voice that was normally reserved for making the school secretary excuse his absences. "Is your throat feeling better?"

"A little." Bella regarded him and the chair he waved at with suspicion. The seat was directly across from him, not beside him. His family sat a few tables away, studiously looking elsewhere. "Don't you think you're doing things out of order?" she asked, still standing. "It goes: pleasant greetings, lunches, dropping in for visits, dramatic teen relationship, and _then_ ridiculous break-up fights."

Edward's face dropped, not because he _finally_ took the hint that she was onto him, but because it looked like she might have decided he wasn't worth her efforts after all. Clearly he'd ruined this before he even realized he wanted to get started. He looked so upset, in fact, that Bella experienced an unexpected surge of pity for him and sat down. For the record, she wasn't a pushover, and she wasn't ready to let him off the hook—social awkwardness alone wasn't a reasonable excuse for what he did. But she was aware that she looked ridiculous just standing there with a sour expression, and with half the school and probably half the townsfolk still buzzing about her vitriolic dress-down of Mike Newton in yesterday's bio class, she didn't want to earn some kind of man-hater reputation. Neither of these were particularly good justifications for knowingly sitting down to eat with her stalker, especially since she didn't know how dangerous he might be, but she didn't think publicly snubbing him would be such a great idea, either, at least not until she actually obtained her new stun gun.

And he _did_ look genuinely sad.

For a second or two, Edward could see the same look on her face he'd seen on himself in the past from his brothers' and sisters' points of view—embarrassment, and an urge to avoid more of it. This was not the type of reasoning he was hoping Bella might have for accepting his invitation. But nothing else about their relationship (if they could be said to have one at all) was typical. And really, no relationship Edward would _ever_ have, be it romantic, platonic, or familial, was ever going to be conventional.

He was interrupted from this brief reverie by the quiet but firm prodding from the object his affection.

"So," Bella said cautiously, "what'd you want to talk about?"

Edward froze as every conversation-starter he'd come up with simultaneously abandoned him. "Well…" _Shit._ "Do you…like…buttered parsnips?"

Bella blinked exactly once. "Seriously?"

"No," Edward recovered. "Of course not. I was just going to ask what your plans are for the day of the dance."

"Firing range," Bella lied immediately. "Charlie promised me I could practice with our _entire_ home arsenal this time." She looked down at her lemonade as she twisted off the top. "My favorite is his .380, but I'm getting good with the shotgun, and I think I'm ready for the hunting rifles." Keeping her head lowered, she looked up at him through her lashes to gauge whether he was buying any of her bullshit.

He wasn't, not for one minute, but it didn't matter. His thoughts were more along the lines of _Crap! She did that thing where she looks at me through her lashes! I was going to do that! I can't believe she stole my Smolder!_

"Sounds like fun," Edward replied, reaching forward and taking the discarded bottle cap. "But the dance isn't until later. The range is usually closed by then." He knew this because the range wasn't far from Don Carlos Carnicería, and they closed at the same time. Every time he went out for a quart of bovine, he had to resist the urge to shout over the sound of gunfire; it was distractingly loud to him, but not to Carlos.

"Well, I'm definitely not going to the dance," Bella assured him. _And I'm not telling you where I'll be, either._

"Spending the evening with someone special?" Edward probed. _Maybe she's got a secret boyfriend._

"Not exactly." Feeling it was best to deflect the conversation away from herself, lest he start trying to find out when she'd be home alone, she asked, "Aren't you going to be there with your family?"

"Ah, no," he responded uncomfortably, "we won't be participating this year."

"Why not?"

The Cullens only attended one school dance per semester. They were all aware of what their relationships looked like to the general population, and while they didn't bother to hide it, that didn't mean they broadcasted it with public make-outs or, as in Rosalie and Emmett's case, dancing the Lambada at every school-sponsored opportunity. In their upperclassman years they usually only attended prom, followed by the two couples' traditional post-prom boinking and Edward's post-prom frustrated deer-hunt in a neighboring state or province.

"It's complicated," he dodged. Feeling just as worried about inadvertent revelations as Bella was, he changed the subject. His mind zeroed in on Bella's regular lunch table. "I think your friends are angry with me for stealing you."

"Are they?" Bella lifted an eyebrow. What would make him think that just from glancing at them across the room from a distance of fifty feet? "They'll survive."

"I may not give you back, though," he replied, a wicked glint in his eyes. Which was _fucking creepy_.

So she told him, "That's _fucking creepy,_ Edward."

He didn't mind that she swore—after decades with Rosalie, he was used to it. But coming from Bella, accusations of disturbing remarks was a bit much. "More so than catering for cannibals?" he said, looking annoyingly smug.

_Fight fire with fire,_ Bella told herself. "It's just as well. I was probably going to murder half of them anyway."

This diverted Edward's attention again, which was fortuitous, because Eric was beginning to wonder exactly what kind of electrical stuff Bella wanted him to alter, why she couldn't discuss it on the phone or at school, and whether or not it had anything to do with her current seating arrangement. Instead of hearing this, Edward was busy failing to probe Bella's mind. "Which half?"

"More like a third of them," Bella said idly. "Lauren and Tyler, I think."

"Lauren is certainly…less than pleasant," Edward conceded. "And Tyler seems to have strange ideas about what his attention to you would do for his reputation."

"That's a nice way of saying Lauren is a world-class bitch and Tyler's an assclown," Bella translated. "Probably not worth slaughtering either of them, though."

"No, probably not," Edward agreed.

"Because then I have to wipe down all the evidence, hide the body, clean up the blood…"

"And don't forget an alibi," Edward chimed in. "It's such a pain." That had always been the most difficult part for him, back when he had such concerns. He didn't shed skin cells or hair, he knew a hundred ways to dispose of a body, and cleaning blood had _never_ been a problem. Faking his whereabouts when he didn't have his mother around to lie for him, however…

"Not worth the headache," Bella concluded. "So Edward, if you don't mind my asking, what exactly am I doing here today?"

"Just having a conversation," Edward said mildly.

"I think you've been more than clear up to this point that you aren't interested in having conversations with me," Bella reminded him. "Unless the whole 'we aren't friends' remark followed by two months of ignoring me had an alternate interpretation."

"I _am_ interested," Edward countered. "I just didn't think it was a good idea before."

"Why not?" Bella asked. _Is it because you knew you'd get all dark and obsessive?_ "And why is it suddenly a good idea now?"

"It's…complicated," he said again. "But I've given up trying to stay away from you. Now I'm just going to do what I want and let the chips fall where they may."

_No shit,_ Bella thought to herself. "What about what I want?"

This was confusing for Edward. He _thought_ he knew what Bella wanted because she had been calling his name in her sleep, but she didn't look happy to see him today, and her mood didn't seem to be improving all that much now that she was sitting with him. He wasn't sure what exactly he'd done to anger her _this_ time, but some sucking up was definitely in order. "Is it too much to hope that you're willing to forgive me long enough to determine whether or not I'm worth speaking to again?"

Bella decided to humor him. "So does this mean you're ready to be friends now?"

"Friends…" Edward frowned. _That doesn't seem like enough._

"Or is this more of a Professor Xavier and Magneto dynamic?" she ventured.

"Just as you please." Edward decided to give her his own Smolder, with the eyelashes and everything. It appeared to be having an effect, judging by her slightly awed expression, but that wasn't the case. Bella was focused on his words, not his looks.

_'Just as you please.' That's the same thing he says in my dreams._

"What are you thinking?" Edward wondered, observing Bella's thoughtful frown.

"I was wondering," she said slowly, "just what you are."

She could see his jaw tighten, though his smile stayed in place. "Having any luck with that?"

"Not nearly as much as I'd like," she answered cryptically.

"What are your theories?" He tried hard to seem as though he was playing along with the joke, but Edward was actually dying of curiosity.

With a vixenish smile of her own, Bella replied, "Guess."

"You want me to guess what your guesses are?"

"Are you going to come out and tell me the truth yourself?" she countered.

"No."

"Then what's my incentive for sharing my speculations?"

"If you think I'm something out of Marvel Comics, I'm not worried," he lied. He was _extremely_ worried.

"Why?" she teased. "Were DC Comics closer to the truth, Man of Steel?"

"Hardly," Edward replied, although his mind briefly called up the image of Bella's Pez dispenser and its _new_ place of honor in a glass display box in his room. "Can't you just tell me what you're thinking?"

"I could. But I won't."

"That's really not fair."

_Oh no, he didn't._

"You've never been fair with _me,_ Edward." They glared at each other, silently acknowledging that shit was about to get serious. "You guard your privacy like it's a damn nuclear launch code, but you have no problem with prying into mine. There's a word for that, and I believe you know what it is."

"Yes, I am a hypocrite," he admitted. "But you have no idea how _frustrating_ it is, trying to read you without any help."

"You're frustrated because _I'm_ not more forthcoming?" Bella took a swig of her lemonade. "That is such crap. I _tried_ to be friends with you. I really did. You threw it back in my face without any explanation. Maybe human interaction just isn't your forte. That's not a crime, so I'm trying to give you another chance right now. But you're blowing it."

"You don't understand," Edward said, gruff now that things weren't going his way. "It's compli—"

"Complicated," Bella interrupted. "Yeah, I get that. I'm not demanding to be let in on your entire realm of secrets, although I think by now I've more than proven that I can be trusted with at least one of them. If you want me to trust _you_, you need show me you're trust_worthy._ Be honest with me about something. Anything. I don't think that's too much to ask, but if it is, then there's no point in sitting here with you. So what's it going to be?"

Sighing silently, Edward replied, "I suppose I understand where you're coming from, but there are some things you're better off not knowing."

"You should know that's like throwing down a gauntlet, Edward."

"Somehow I don't think you mind a good challenge." Not that her taking on such a challenge was a very good _idea,_ but then again, Edward wasn't aware of all the hypotheses she'd already formed. Also, he was running out of clever things to say. Glancing behind her (and hoping to distract her), he added, "By the way, your boyfriend's jealous."

Thrown off, Bella said, "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Mike," Edward elaborated. "He's debating whether or not to break up our fight."

_God, Mike,_ Bella groaned internally._ Like I needed another thing to deal with._ "I'm sure you're wrong."

"I'm not. Most people are easy to read." If Edward didn't want Bella to think he had mutant telepathic powers, he really shouldn't have been reading minds at the table, let alone _relaying the thoughts back to her._

Bella thought about this and sighed. Too much had come at her too fast in the last two days, and she'd finally reached a point where nothing would surprise her anymore, not even telepathy. But she did want to test something. "He'd never do it."_ Edward,_ she thought, _there's a spider on your shoulder._

"No, he won't," Edward confirmed, focusing a little harder on Mike's mind while his hands rested in front of him. "He's just contemplating it."

"Who's he more afraid of," Bella asked, "you or me?"_ Edward, don't you own any hair gel?_

"Me," Edward said absently, not messing with his hair at all (for once). He was highly entertained by Mike's fantasy of hitting him over the head with a rubber mallet used for staking tents into the ground (on sale at Newton's Store for $6.99). "All you did was embarrass him."

"Riiight…" Bella said, stretching out the word. "So why is he afraid of you?" _You smell like the entire perfume department at Macy's._

Bella's question pulled Edward's mind out of Mike's and back into his own existential misery.

He didn't like Mike—he didn't particularly like any human before Bella, at least not on a personal level. He would, however, have liked the option to make friends with people outside his family, but everything about his life made this impossible, from his need for secrecy to his thirst to his natural predatory vibe that seemed to scare everyone away. And worse: these same things didn't seem to stop Carlisle from having a career that required _daily, intimate interaction_ with human patients, so on top of Edward's social outcast issues, he had unvoiced jealousy issues. Worst of all, he knew every uncensored thought these people had about _him:_ good, bad, fear, lust, disdain, everything. That kind of thing wears on the self-image after only a few days—imagine dealing with it nonstop for over ninety years.

"Because I'm…different."

Responding not to the words, but to the hint of pain in Edward's voice, Bella said, "I think that might be the first honest thing you've said all day."

"You think so?" Edward said lightly; he hadn't meant to go to that place in his thoughts, certainly not in front of Bella.

She looked at him in earnest and thought: _I know you were in my room last night. I promise I won't get angry if you come clean and promise not to do it again._

When he didn't respond, she looked away and pulled her lemonade to her mouth.

"Please tell me what you're thinking," he pleaded. Nine decades of being defined by the impressions of the people and vampires around him made this question an emotional imperative.

Bella only shook her head, trying to understand what _she_ was feeling, why she was willing to give him a pass at all. She wished she could talk to someone about this, perhaps Renee. But nobody, not even her eccentric, free-spirited mother, would get past 'so I have this stalker' before freaking the hell out. No normal person would believe Bella if she said Edward wasn't human, either. But she knew. And she was…okay with it. She just wanted more information. _Direct_ information.

"Different isn't so bad," she mused, "as long as you have someone to be different with."

Edward, who was pleased that she felt that way but did not like the logical conclusion to the statement (namely, an undead Bella) warned the girl, "I'm not a good friend for you in that regard."

"You approached _me_ today," she reminded him—his pattern of friendliness followed by pushing away was a cycle he needed to break, and damn it all if she wasn't going to break him of it. "I think I'm correct in assuming that means you're at least willing to try."

"I suppose I am," he conceded. "But if you were smart, you'd stay away from me."

_Says the guy who snuck into my house._ "I think we've established that that's not going to happen," Bella pointed out. "In fact, I think we've spent the last forty-five minutes definitively nailing it down."

"Well, it's going to happen for the next hour at least," Edward said, indicating the nearly empty cafeteria with a sideways nod. "Class is starting, and I'm ditching."

Startled, Bella gathered up her things. "You sure? I could really use a lab partner who actually participates in the labs, you know."

"Not today," Edward said morosely. He knew Alice would criticize him for being 'emo,' but he couldn't quite help it. Something as simple as going to class with a girl he liked was completely out of the question because being next to her when she pricked a finger might result in her immediate and highly public death. That kind of thing was bound to get a guy down.

With a roll of her eyes, Bella rose from the table. "Suit yourself." _This boy has the worst mood swings. I swear he's bipolar._

"Bella?" he called out before she could leave him.

"Yes?"

_I love you._

"I may have…saved you," he admitted quietly. "But that doesn't make me the hero."

Bella's eyes flickered over him. "I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to play the bad guy, Edward. The world isn't broken down into good guys and bad guys, just good and bad decisions. But I'll tell you this much: I believe in being my own hero whenever I can."

Edward nodded. He could live with that.

"By the way," she added slyly, "I've never had any before."

Confused, Edward looked up. "Had what?"

_You really _can't_ read my mind, can you?_

"Parsnips."


	13. Blood in My Eyes for You

_Previously: Alice advised Edward to skip Biology_

Blood in My Eyes for You

Before she even walked all the way into the classroom, Bella could smell what was coming. The trashcan full of used Band-Aids and stained tissues reeked of dried blood, and the reused Clorox bottle that Mr. Banner was using as a biohazard receptacle was obviously filled with used lancets.

_I can get through this,_ Bella told herself. _I am a grown woman, not a five-year-old child. I can do anything I set my mind to._ She walked a few feet away from the door, took in some fresh air, and marched herself into the lab.

Alice, who was watching this unfold from a few buildings away, wondered what it meant. Remembering what Edward had said about Forksians being prone to hemophilia, and considering that Bella's father was native to the area, Alice double-checked that Edward was safely tucked away in his car before she glimpsed into Bella's near future.

_How strange,_ Alice mused. After a bit more peeking, she smiled and slipped off to her next class. Sometimes it really was better to just let things happen naturally.

_Shit,_ Bella thought as Mr. Banner began passing out supplies and explaining the lab. _I really should have prepared myself for this. I would have known about this lab if I'd been paying attention yesterday, but no, I was all heated about stupid Mike Newton trying to ask me out, and then Edward got all weird and talkative on me. God damn all these boys and their distractions. This is why I should have gone to an all-girl boarding school._

It wasn't that she couldn't deal with a single needle prick to her own skin. It wasn't that she couldn't handle a couple of other people with pricked fingers—a little swoon never killed anybody. The problem was that the entire class would be doing this lab at once, and while she could _watch_ someone hemorrhage buckets on camera without breaking a sweat, the _smell_ of thirty other kids' blood drops was a big deal. It was also cold and cloudy today, so not only was there no chance of an open window to ventilate the air, the building's heater was cranked up (the better to marinate everyone and saturate the environment with blood, pheromones, and post-lunch flatulence).

_Woman up, Bella! I'm never going to get through forensic biology courses if I don't learn to deal with this nausea._

Bella was no chicken, nor was she the type to give up easily. She had every intention of completing her own blood typing card, so she did her damnedest to stay upright. But Bob Banner had to come around the classroom and put four water droplets on _each individual card, one at a time._ For some reason he wouldn't _delegate_ the task to anyone else in the interest of efficiency—he didn't trust anyone not to make a mess. But he let everyone pass down their testing packets instead of handing those out _with_ the water. And half the students were _stupid_, and didn't wait until he got to them _before_ they started pricking their fingers as they'd been instructed. So while Mr. Banner ran around the entire classroom ineptly facilitating the mass bloodletting, Bella sat in the back of the room trying to breathe through her mouth only once every ninety seconds.

Edward would have found her struggle ironic if he'd been paying attention. But he didn't want to think about Bella's flowing blood, knowing it would only torture him (and possibly drive him to burst into the classroom and kill her). So instead of watching her through Mike Newton's lewd thoughts or Mr. Banner's condescending ones, he was composing a song in his car and wondering what color brassiere she'd be wearing today. (He still hadn't allowed himself to look at the front of her chest.) Thus, he was the last to know when Bella finally passed out on her lab table, not from the smell of blood, but from holding her breath for too long and depriving her brain of oxygen.

Bella came to just as Mike Newton of all people was hauling her out the door. Her nausea hadn't passed yet, though, and it didn't help that Mike's finger was still bleeding. He also wasn't nearly as strong as he thought he was, so it didn't take much of Bella's instinctive struggling before he dropped her flat on her ass in the damp earth.

_"Oof!"_

"Shit! Bella, I'm so sorry!"

Having the wind knocked out of her, Bella just lay in the grass, very still, and closed her eyes. At least he hadn't dropped her on the concrete sidewalk. Actually, it was nice and cool down here, and the air was clean. Perfect place to recover, if only Mike would go away. He was the only one around to see her fall, which he would never admit because then people would know he was too weak to carry a 110-pound girl twenty feet without dropping her. So really, as long as she got the bracken off her jacket and got up before the next bell, there was no reason to think anyone else would ever know—

"Bella!"

_Oh hell._

"What happened?" the familiar, angry voice demanded. "What did you do to her?"

"It wasn't me!" Mike protested. "She fainted in class. She didn't even stick her finger, just started turning colors and then passed out."

"So you threw her in the _mud?_"

_Stop it,_ Bella wanted to say. Except that between the blood-induced nausea, the fall, and the citric acid in her lemonade from lunch, it was probably better not to open her mouth.

"I didn't _throw_ her, I was just taking her to the nurse—"

"Shut up and go away," Edward ordered him, squatting down to check Bella's breathing. She seemed fine, just very pale, and her pulse was fast but coming back down to normal. "Assclown," he added when Mike started to object. _Let it never be said that Bella never taught me anything, even if it's just a new swear word._ "Bella, can you hear me?"

"Mmmph."

Before she could quite come to terms with what was happening, Bella felt herself being lifted into the air and swept away. And she knew, without having to open her eyes, without even having to smell him, that it was Edward holding her. The same tenderness was there in his arms, just like the day of Tyler's van.

Maybe having a stalker wasn't _all_ bad.

"So you faint at the sight of blood?"

Unless the stalker was also kind of a jerk.

None of this funny, not even a little bit. Edward was just so relieved that Bella wasn't hurt, he couldn't help laughing. Sensitivity to blood, of all things—the universe was definitely messing with him. He teased Bella about it a little more on the way to the nurse's office. Not because he wanted to annoy her, but because he didn't want to think about the fact that she was in his arms or what it could lead to. It wasn't very far to the woods, and there was no one around to see them vanish. No one to see him embrace her as a lover. Or to hear her scream. _Why does she have to smell so delicious? _

A better question was why she looked so content. But there was no use letting himself think about that either. He was expecting her to protest at least a little, since she seemed to protest everything else he ever said or did, but she didn't this time. (Back in her own classroom, Alice shocked her class _once again_ by yipping for joy for no apparent reason. Her instructor made a note to call Mrs. Cullen and express his concern.) As Edward explained the situation to Nurse Hammond, he wondered if Bella wasn't struggling because she was sicker than he thought, or worse, injured from her fall. _Damn that Mike Newton._

In fact Bella did consider raising a little hell—if it had been any other guy, she'd have been jumping out of their arms the same as she did with Mike, not to mention punching them in the dick. She did not _like _being manhandled, thank you, especially not by jackass guys who were probably just ogling her or trying to feel her up. However, in spite of Edward's ribbing and what _should_ have been the unforgiveable fact that he'd invaded her home, she couldn't bring herself to say anything that would make him let go. Later, Bella would tell herself that her lack of fighting spirit was all because she was still dizzy and already having the strangest day. But when Edward laid her on the nurse's vinyl bed, and she opened her eyes and stared into his…that was it for Bella Marie Swan. Even if she didn't particularly understand it, Bella never before felt like she belonged anywhere, or _with _anyone, more than she did in that stolen moment.

Naturally Edward ruined the moment almost immediately.

"There now," he said as he moved himself to the opposite side of the room (less out of excited thirst than one might expect and more out of confusion about the look on Bella's face—why did it make him want to kiss her, like some unconscious chick in a Disney cartoon?), "isn't that more comfortable than the patch of dirt I found you in?"

"If I have projectile vomit," she muttered, thinking he wouldn't hear, "I'm aiming for you."

"If you do," he smirked, "at least I'll know you're alive. When I saw Mike carrying you, I thought I'd have to avenge your murder."

He would have, too; he'd been absolutely terrified when he looked out from his windshield and saw Bella crumple onto the ground at Mike's feet. Mike Newton looked an awful lot like a young Jeffrey Dahmer to Edward's biased eyes. In fact, when _the_ Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and his crimes publicized, Edward's family had to physically restrain him from flying to Wisconsin specifically to kill the man. So it was not even remotely an exaggeration to say Edward would have taken Mike Newton's life in a fraction of a second if the boy had done anything to Bella.

"How sweet," Bella murmured, closing her eyes again. Which made Edward wonder if she was using sarcasm or if this was actually the form of flattery that worked on her. (The answer: both.)

"Honestly, I've seen corpses with better color," Edward assured her, thinking she'd assume he was just kidding (even though he wasn't).

Bella, who assumed no such thing, took a deep, calming breath before responding. With it came Edward's scent, and this time it didn't bother her. "Where was all this zeal for vengeance when Tyler almost killed me?"

"Evidently I was repressing it until now," Edward mused. "Mike gets to reap the benefits."

"Poor Mike," Bella clucked.

Edward, who once again could not stop himself from reading minds in front of Bella and telling her all about it, even though he didn't want her to know he was telepathic, cheerfully announced, "He absolutely loathes me." _When he's not afraid I'm going to exterminate him._

"Between the two of us," Bella sighed, unknowingly thrilling Edward just by saying _the two of us,_ "we've given him a rough couple of days."

"This is true," Edward agreed. "What with you calling him a prick, me calling him an assclown, and the other boys calling him 'Bella's bitch—'"

"I can _hear you!_" Nurse Hammond called from the restroom, where she was making a cold compress the old fashioned way (with a clean washcloth and cold water, rather than a chemical ice pack like a better-funded school nurse's office). Emerging from the water closet, she added, "Young man, get back to class."

"I'm supposed to stay with her," he lied to her face, confident that the old woman would not want to continue looking him in the eye. Very few people ever did.

"I very much doubt it," she grumbled. Primal fear or not, thirty years as a school nurse had given her enough insight to know when someone was making an excuse to cut class, though she _did_ look away. "But if you must be here, at least shut your trap so my patient can rest."

"I'm all right," Bella announced, though she still accepted the cold washcloth. "But I don't think it's a good idea for me to go back to that particular class today." Just as she said this, Mike Newton burst through the door, struggling with Lee Stevens.

Edward noticed the trickle of blood running down Lee's hand and stopped his breathing immediately, quickly preparing himself to whisk Bella out of the room if necessary. _And Alice thought I was exaggerating about the hemophiliacs._

**

* * *

**

A/N: From here, you can go back to Chapter 1 to see what happens next in the timeline.

**A/N 2: No, I don't mean "Blood in My Eyes" by Godsmack or Disturbed or Dimestore Hoods. I'm referring to "I've Got Blood in My Eyes for You" by Mississippi Sheiks (or the Bob Dylan version, if you prefer). Yes, I'm old. No, I'm not THAT old. Shut up.**


	14. In the Garden of Eden

_Previously: Edward carried a faint Bella to the nurse's office. It was romantic or some shit; there has to be SOME reason everyone's pissed that scene wasn't in the movie. Even though nothing important actually happened in that scene in the actual book…damn it…_

_Previously in **my** version: Edward carried a faint Bella to the nurse's office. She looked in his eyes and realized either she was in love or she was still dizzy from lack of oxygen. And afterward, there was a conversation about cadaver dogs and the smell of blood and death (see chapter 1). Which probably passes for dirty-talk to a vampire._

In the Garden of Eden

"I'm not letting you drive home like this!" Edward protested. He almost grabbed the hood of Bella's jacket to drag her to his car, but better sense prevailed, thus preventing him from getting cussed out drunken-sailor style.

"Like what?" Bella demanded. She even looked down at her body, as if there might be clues to her mysterious, heretofore unknown disability on her clothing. "I'm fine."

Edward scoffed. "You _fainted._"

"I'm still fine," Bella shrugged.

"Please allow me to give you a ride," he offered.

Bella shook her head vehemently. "Not a chance. There is no _way_ I'm leaving my truck here."

"Alice can drive it back," Edward suggested.

_Wow,_ Bella thought, _he must think I'm **really** stupid._ "I don't _know _Alice. I'm not giving anyone the keys to my truck _and_ my house, especially people I don't know. For all I know, you'll make copies without my permission and start sneaking into my house or something."

It was with effort that Edward did not duck his head with embarrassment. Instead he offered a compromise. "May I at least follow you home so I can be sure you arrive in one piece without mowing down any pedestrians?"

Bella, noting how smoothly he sidestepped her mental landmine, and still not certain of what to do about it other than continue to feign ignorance of his nighttime activity, said, "If you insist." It wasn't like she could stop him.

She wasn't sure what she expected to happen, letting Edward escort her like that. But whatever she may have imagined, it certainly wasn't that Edward would shut off his engine in front of her house and climb into the cab of her truck faster than you can say 'Dude, go _home_.'

"I was thinking," he said without preamble, "that you might feel more comfortable having me as a friend if we knew a little more about each other."

Staring at him for a moment, Bella replied, "You're not going to do that thing where you say 'We should start over,' and introduce yourself by name are you? Because that only works in cheesy romantic comedies." Also, technically he'd already done that once, only to proceed from friendly overtures to heroic acts to hostility.

"Absolutely not," Edward promised. "We can't forget what we already know." He certainly couldn't, even if he wanted to. Yet another curse of immortality. "All we can do is learn new things. Tell me about your mother."

"That's not a Freudian joke, is it?" Bella asked, earning a smile.

So they sat together and actually talked. Edward learned about Renee and Phil and Phil's baseball career (which, he decided, was not nearly as interesting as the circus career she'd once joked about, but was still better than driving a truck for a living). Bella had no qualms about revealing these things—it wasn't like Edward couldn't just as easily Google her step-father's name or find her mother's old internet dating profile if he was of a mind to do so. (He hadn't. Edward believed internet searches were unethical violations of privacy. Oh, the irony.) Edward also learned about Renee's little eccentricities, like the time she and her friends formed an all-girl garage band. Renee could rock an electronic keyboard like nobody's business—her rendition of 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' brought tears to the eyes.

Bella, meanwhile, learned the public version of Edward's adoption. Or rather, she heard the public version for the second time. Except for the part about his biological parents being dead, and the obvious fact that he loved Dr. and Mrs. Cullen a great deal and called them by their given names, it was nothing she hadn't heard before from her classmates. She did feel bad for him, losing his real parents, but it seemed to have happened so long ago that he was simply used to it. Which made her wonder: if it was really _that_ long ago since his birth-parents' passing, how was it that the Cullens were old enough to have adopted him when it happened?

Then again, since she was already convinced Edward and his siblings (and probably Dr. Cullen, now that she thought about it) weren't human beings, and since she was sure Edward was older than he pretended to be, she supposed the adoption story was probably false, or at least parts of it were. So basically, she realized, when Edward said he wanted the two of them to know more about each other, what he really meant was that he wanted to know more about her, but he didn't want her to know much more about him. No matter how much she liked him, no matter what kind of romantic epiphany she had earlier, there was only so much inequality she could take in one day.

"You know what?" Bella said, trying for an inviting attitude instead of the snippy one she was actually feeling. "I think it would be nice if you told me something about yourself I don't already know."

"Dead parents not enough for you?" Edward smirked.

"Something I wouldn't have guessed at by virtue of your adoption," Bella clarified, "which is common knowledge, by the way."

Edward thought very carefully before he spoke. "I kept the Superman Pez dispenser you gave me."

Just like that, Bella's heart was so full she didn't think she could take it. This had nothing to do with dizziness or falling down—this was real, much too real, and more than she could handle after such an eventful afternoon. Without looking up at him, she whispered, "I need to get some things done right now. I'll see you tomorrow, Edward."

"Wait," he stopped her, still trying to prolong his time with her. "May I ask you a question?"

"May I ask one in return?" she asked, still quiet but recovering her composure as quickly as she could manage.

"Yes," he answered, though that part made him nervous. What on _earth_ would this girl ask him?

"Okay then," Bella agreed, wondering how personal _his_ question might be.

What to ask her; Edward had not one question, but a million. What was she really doing next Saturday? What was that postal package on her doorstep? Did his keeping the Pez dispenser really mean that much to her? What did he smell like to her nose? Who in the _hell_ was this 'Consuela' person she kept thinking about?

In the end, it was Edward's old fashioned sense of social propriety that won out, but as far as he was concerned it was still a legitimately important question:

"Do you think your parents would approve of whomever you choose to be with?"

Bella correctly interpreted this question as: _Do you think they would approve of me?_

"My mother is very…accepting," Bella said carefully. "She dated her fair share of losers before she found Phil, and I saw her through all of them. As long as I'm safe and happy, I think she'll be happy."

"And Chief Swan?" Edward persisted, though he was cheered by Renee's open-mindedness, even if he didn't actually expect it to extend to vampires.

"Charlie is an unknown at this point—we didn't exactly keep him informed about my social life when I was living in Phoenix. But I don't think he'd have a problem with making an unwanted boy…disappear," she smiled devilishly.

Resisting the urge to laugh at the idea of a human making _him_ disappear, Edward smilingly replied, "I'd expect nothing less from the chief of police where his only daughter is concerned."

"I'm glad people feel that way," Bella said, "because I'd rather not need him to actually step in." Feeling that Edward might take that the wrong way, she added, "He's never had an unkind word to say about you, and he seems to get along well with your father whenever I go in for urgent care. I think you'll be fine as long as you're respectful and you don't break any _laws_."

Edward stared at her for a moment, wondering at her emphasis. Because without being able to read her mind, he _couldn't take a freaking hint. _Also, what was with Carlisle treating Bella at the hospital and not saying anything? _Somebody_ was going to get interrogated when he got home from work this evening.

"My turn," Bella insisted. "And this is important to me, so please be honest."

It bothered both of them that she had to keep asking for his honesty. Realizing this, Edward nodded his head, promising himself to be as honest as he could without compromising his family secrets.

Bella almost said something about him sneaking into her room. Almost. But she didn't expect to get a truthful answer, and even if she _did,_ she had no way of knowing what would happen after that, if he'd just get embarrassed and stutter, or if he'd freak out and kidnap her for knowing too much or something equally Lifetime-movie-ish.

Instead she asked something else that had been bugging her since she caught him staring at her necklace with that crazy look on his face: "Does it matter to you that I'm Jewish?"

Of course, Bella was unaware that Edward had actually been staring at her jugular at the time, and _he_ was unaware that he'd offended her because he'd been too busy fantasizing about blood and kissing her soft skin. What's more, he was already deeply in love with her by now, and he doubted very much there was anything she could say, do, or be that would ever change that. So in thinking about her question, since he could only think of a limited number of highly unlikely circumstances in which her ethnicity or religion would make the slightest bit of difference to their otherwise dangerous,_ ridiculous_ situation, Edward merely shrugged. "Not unless it does to you."

In point of fact, being a Jewish woman was _very_ important to Bella, but she decided his answer was acceptable enough for the time being. There was plenty of time to teach him about her heritage later, and maybe learn more about his. "Are you coming to First Beach with everyone this Saturday?" she wondered. Part of her wanted to see him outside of school, just to talk. Another part of her wanted him where there were lots of people to keep an eye on him.

"No," he answered casually, though he felt bitterer than ever about the treaty that kept him from setting foot on La Push. His entire family was well aware that the Quileute council forbade its people from seeking emergency medical treatment or employment at Forks General Hospital from the moment Carlisle was hired. According to the hospital rumor mill, many of the younger parents of the tribe rebelled against this, claiming that it was wrong to deprive their children of proper health care or give up stable jobs just because of a four-generation-old grudge with "Dr. Cullen's ancestor." It appeared the generation who were actually _present_ when the treaty was made had died off, the youngest generations didn't really believe it was what their elders said it was, and there were no more "protectors" cavorting in the forests. Thus, Carlisle chose to remain in Forks instead of relocating to some other place, _any_ other place, where they'd never had any kind of binding, perpetual, obviously-not-completely-forgotten agreement with any of the locals that they were still expected to honor. Edward thought it was a fairly stupid decision at the time.

Also, besides making Carlisle's work environment a little strained, this arrangement was totally keeping Edward from spending the day with an interesting woman.

Well, that and the weather.

Thinking of the sunlight Alice had promised, Edward added, "Emmet and I are spending our weekend hiking in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, south of Rainier. We're actually leaving tomorrow morning, so I won't see you at school." No one, not Edward, not Bella, not even future generations some three centuries hence who read the historical record of this conversation, knew why on earth he would volunteer so much highly specific, easily researchable, potentially damning information. Evidently Carlisle wasn't the only one capable of making stupid decisions.

"Sounds like something you'll enjoy," Bella commented. "I hope you have fun." Lord knew _she_ wouldn't be doing any hiking if she could possibly help it.

"I'm sure I will," Edward answered. He generally had fun hunting with Emmett, mostly because hunting in the mountains brought out the Appalachia in his brother's voice. While Edward didn't laugh because he knew mountain people didn't appreciate anyone making fun of their dialect, it was impossible not be both interested and frustrated. It wasn't just about _hearing _the language—during a hunt, Emmett actually thought in Appalachian English, for which he neither apologized nor bothered to provide a translation. Even after knowing Emmett for more than seventy-five years, Edward still had to consciously interpret things like _Let's santer around in the laurel and see if we find any bear signs _and_ Some peckerwood left a poke o' candy a-back of them trees up yander._

Still, fun as that might be, it wasn't the topic Edward found most fascinating at the moment. "So," Mr. Subtle tried, "what are you doing _next_ Saturday?"

"Goodbye, Edward," Bella dismissed him, though she couldn't help laughing when she said it.

Edward said his farewell and got into his own car. It was just as well that their conversation ended when it did—he was getting thirstier by the minute, sitting in the cab of that little truck with her scent everywhere. He resolved to go alleviate that problem before doing some internet research on Judaism, since it was a subject he knew little about. And after that, he was probably going to have to break down and ask Alice what Bella's plans were for the day of the dance. It was driving him crazy.

Bella was glad he'd gone, too, so she could air out her truck. Edward's perfume was starting to grow on her a little, but it wasn't her _favorite_ scent in the world. Yet.

After opening up the cardboard mailer on her doorstep (a hand-painted Mardi Gras mask from Renee, along with the note _Thought you might like this for Purim!),_ Bella made herself a snack and was just about to sit down to start on her homework when she remembered that she'd forgotten to stop at the butcher's shop after grocery shopping the day before. Not only did she need some meat for dinner, but she also needed to stock up for Charlie's poker night. "Crap," she sighed, closing her book and searching for her keys.

It wasn't too long of a drive to Don Carlos, and it didn't look like there'd be much of a wait. There was only one other customer:

Mrs. Nguyen.

xXxXx

After leaving Bella at home (she was right—she really didn't _need_ an escort, but he was glad he had the chance to talk to her alone) and stopping for a drink, Edward was late getting back to the school to pick up his siblings. There were only a few cars left in the parking lot, all belonging to faculty and staff, and his brothers' and sisters' thoughts didn't seem to be there. He sniffed out their collective scent and realized they'd vanished into the woods and run home without him.

Rosalie was likely to be highly upset by this. She'd made a point of wearing her favorite pair of Christian Louboutin pumps today (Edward _hated_ that he knew this much about women's shoes, but he couldn't help hearing Rosalie think about it all the damn time), so she probably wasn't enthused about having to run in them. Why she couldn't just take them off and run barefoot like a normal vampire was anyone's guess. Privately, Edward believed she just liked finding excuses to be angry.

But as it turned out, Rosalie was pissed off for a completely _different_ reason.

"My hand!" she shrieked at him the moment he walked in the door. Esme and Emmett were clustered around her, with Alice hovering nearby. "Look at what these _oafs_ did to my _hand!_"

Edward only had half a moment to glimpse at Rosalie's left hand before she stuck the blackened inch of skin back into her mouth, but it was long enough for an accurate assessment. Her venom would heal her injury, but the results would take at least another hour, given the size of the burn (which Alice had already confirmed). Emmett looked on with worry, but while he clearly wanted to help, Rosalie was having none of it. So there was nothing for her husband to do but watch as she literally licked her own wounds. Edward reflected that, at moments like this, even the most refined of his kind were more animal than man.

"Tesla coil experiment didn't go so well?" he guessed, handing his injured sister the extra cup of duck blood he had intended for his mother. She gave him quick but fervent thanks and slurped at it immediately, the better to increase her venom production. She didn't even care that the blood was cold. As a bonus, everyone was too distracted by her situation to comment on Edward smelling like a human.

"Rosalie had sixth period physics," Jasper explained from where he sat on the floor, laying out his chessboards. Edward noted that Jasper was actually keeping Rosalie much calmer than she normally would have been, but doing so in a way that left her just irritated enough that she didn't suspect him of 'toying with her emotions' again. "By the end of the day Mr. Fontanier realized that the station we'd sabotaged was broken. He made her use Station Five instead of Six, and she didn't have a legitimate excuse to leave class, so…"

"So she burned her hand when it discharged," Edward finished. He certainly had sympathy for her—it had taken his hands and feet a whole 36 hours to heal after the Empire State Building incident. But then again…. "Which oafs do you say burned you, Rosalie?"

She didn't speak, what with her hand in her mouth again, but he heard (amid a lot of swearing) the thought: _Emmett, Jasper, and Alice, of course._

Raising an eyebrow, Edward asked her, "How is it their fault?"

_Shit, damn, hell, they should have warned me, shit, ass, fuck…_

"How were they to know?" Edward demanded, waving his arm at his brothers. "They have _first_ period physics."

"Don't you dare blame me, Sparky," Jasper sniped at Rosalie, though it wasn't terribly vicious. "I _did_ my job."

_Fuck, hell, ow, Alice should have been looking, but **no,** she was too busy worrying about you to remember **your** science class wasn't the only one with dangerous potential—_

"Shut up, Rosalie," Edward said casually, unwilling to listen to yet another excuse for why the latest affliction that had befallen his sister was in no way her fault. "You're a woman—you could have faked a female emergency and cut class. Or you could have been the note-taker in your group. But no, you proceeded with the experiment even though you knew you'd get burned, and now you're screaming bloody murder for a wound that you won't even feel by the time _Ellen DeGeneres_ is over. You just enjoy being the center of attention."

Everyone noticed the involuntary widening of Rose's eyes, followed by her typical "wounded innocent" expression, and finally her "okay, you got me" sigh. With a collective groan, the family went back to their hobbies, though Emmett gave his wife a kiss before joining Jasper at Octo-Chess. Deflated, Rosalie kept her bad hand in her mouth and used the other to play with the remote control. _Ellen_ was a rerun, _Tyra_ was annoying (the woman was more concerned about responding to her weight-critics, hair-critics, and boob-critics than actually putting on a watchable show), and _Maury_ was showcasing yet another large group of trashy, promiscuous cretins arguing over the paternity of their ugly offspring. Rosalie feared for the future of America, but not so much that she was willing to do more than change the channel.

When the family went back to largely ignoring him as well, Edward sat down in front of his grand piano and started his warm-up exercises. This gesture was appreciated—the right music was able to alter the family mood naturally, without forcing Jasper to absorb things that made him uncomfortable. Today's selection sounded just a little off because it was originally intended for a different instrument, and Edward couldn't quite sustain the notes the same way, but it was still particularly cheery for his audience. Emmett was the one who recognized the tune first.

"Is that…Iron Butterfly?"

"No…" Edward lied, though he couldn't help looking sheepish. "Yes. I have this song stuck in my head." _In-a-gadda-da-vida honey…don't you know that I love you…_

Everyone enjoyed a good laugh before Edward moved on to a new melody, to _the _new melody. Esme in particular was especially happy, all full of maternal pride at her talented son. Nobody had the heart to remind her that his talent had absolutely nothing to do with either her genetic contribution or her nurturing influence, as he'd taken ten years' worth of piano lessons prior to his transformation. Still, Esme was absolutely _delighted_ by the new lullaby Edward was composing, even if it made Rosalie storm off in a jealous, humiliated huff, which in turn made Edward laugh and Jasper smirk.

Naturally, Alice tried to coax the full explanation for Rosalie's reaction out of Edward. And naturally, he refused. And of _course,_ Esme defended him. "Edward is trying to be a gentleman."

This earned a disapproving snort from Jasper. "A gentleman does not visit a lady's private quarters after nightfall, Esme. Why would Edward bother to conceal our sister's jealousy, which we've all known about for months, but have no care for his human girl's honor, welfare, privacy, or dignity?"

Jasper and Alice knew perfectly well that Rosalie was envious of Bella's inexplicable allure (and not just to Edward, but apparently to three human boys with _obvious_ vision problems as well). Until now the couple chose not to comment on it because they cared enough about their sister not to want to embarrass her. Emmett, who had heard Alice's accusation of jealousy at the epic Family Meeting back in January, had written it off as a woman thing that would dissipate if he never, ever brought it up and if he told his wife how hot she was on a regular basis. Edward never thought about it at all, and because everyone else made a point of not thinking about it when he was around, he was allowed to go on with his own preoccupations none the wiser. Esme had _wanted_ to reassure her daughter that _she_ was the prettiest, but she knew Rosalie would never admit to any insecurities in the first place, and anyway, Rosalie was supposed to be a grown woman, not a _four-year-old girl._

The idea that Rosalie was jealous of Bella was old news, this was true. Edward sneaking off to Bella's house, and what that might mean other than him finally making an effort to pursue a relationship, was still very new. Apparently nobody had given much thought to the variety of interpretations his actions might have, or rather they'd not given _voice_ to such things. But the time of silence was over, especially for Jasper, who had listened very closely to Edward and Bella's lunchtime conversation and came away with much to be unhappy about, including a surprising number of issues that were not self-serving. Alice, foreseeing conflict, wanted to intercede, but she'd done quite enough of that where discussions about Bella were involved.

"Such human concerns," Edward replied to his brother defensively, "for someone who left his human nature behind in the 19th century."

"I find it ironic that you'd say that," Jasper quipped. "Generally people use the phrase 'human nature' to _justify_ their lack of discipline." Certainly Jasper and Emmett had used _it's in our nature_ to explain themselves whenever they accidentally killed people.

"Discipline requires practice. How am I expected to acclimate to her scent," Edward asked, "if I don't spend as much time as possible around it?"

From the garage, Rosalie shouted, "You shouldn't be acclimating to her scent! You shouldn't be in love with her at all!"

"Acclimating to her scent? That's your legitimate excuse for a _home invasion?_" Jasper challenged him.

"You're blowing this out of proportion. I'm not holding her _hostage_," Edward groaned. "She doesn't even know I'm there. I don't touch her or her things."

Jasper only rolled his eyes. "Please don't say that like it makes you into an honorable man. If any of us stood in your room and watched you all night, you would throw us out. When it was Tanya staring at you, even in _her _house_,_ you made a point of locking your guestroom door so she'd understand that you resented the intrusion."

"Tanya was in it for the conquest," Edward countered.

"That's not the point," Jasper said easily. "We're not talking about Tanya; we're talking about you and the human."

"You mean the one you were so keen to murder two months ago?" Edward reminded his brother, though he was really trying to remind everyone else.

"A threat I rescinded," Jasper replied crisply. "She has nothing to fear from _me_ anymore. I'm not the vampire stealing into the room of the girl you would have us all believe you love and respect. That's her space, her refuge, and you have no right to be there."

"I'm afraid I must agree with your brother this time," Esme said, though the strictness that belonged there was missing from her voice. "I want you to have the love you deserve, son, but what you've done is not the way a gentleman behaves."

"I will not have you all gang up on me," Edward said steadily, rising from his piano seat. "Emmett, if you're ready to get the weekend started, we may as well leave now."

"That's right, run away," Jasper sneered, though he returned the bulk of his attention to his chess game, which he was determined to finish with or without an opponent. "That's your answer to every problem. Can't see that blowing up in your face. Bella Swan is such a _lucky_ girl to have someone like you around."

Emmett sighed and excused himself to say goodbye to his wife. Days like this, he _really_ wished he and Rosalie could just move out already, or maybe give up the pretense of being "the children" and be "the in-laws who live a few miles down the road." Carlisle had an impression that Rosalie and Emmett were naturally nomadic, and to some extent he was correct, but the truth was that after every three or four year period of confinement with their family, Emmett just wanted to enjoy a stretch of time without having to pick a side in yet another family squabble.

While Emmett went outside and Jasper went on playing chess against himself and trying to ignore his younger brother, Edward took a moment to ask Alice a question that had been bugging him all day. "What are Bella's plans for the weekend of the dance?"

Alice blinked. "Seriously? You want me to look into the future for that? Why didn't you just ask her or look at her day planner—" _while you were in her room last night?_

"It's not like you don't _live_ for the moments when you get to tell the future," Edward pointed out. "What's the big deal?"

"The big deal is you're an ass," she answered, mostly for Jasper's benefit—he was her husband, after all, and she wanted to at least _appear_ that she agreed with him. "I'm sure she has her reasons for not telling you." _Just sneak into her room again and check her calendar._

"Oh, come on, Alice," Edward cajoled her. "Save me from worrying about it all weekend."

With a sigh, Alice checked, trying to pretend that she was really put out about it. Which wasn't fooling her husband at all—it was silly of her to try when he knew perfectly well how much Alice wanted this thing with Bella Swan to happen, and attempting to be sneaky was only likely to cause friction in the marriage. Alice sometimes wasn't big on that kind of forward-moving logic; she preferred reverse-engineered realities.

It was only a few moments later that Alice realized Bella's future had gone crazy again. _Nothing_ made the slightest bit of sense or came in any particular order. Bella in some kind of church building with other people, listening as a man read from a scroll. Bella taking a basket of fruit and cookies to some neighbors. A Mardi Gras mask. Children in…Halloween costumes? The same man who read the scroll dressed up as a _pirate?_ Then it melted, and there was an airplane—no, a long drive in the dilapidated pick-up truck—maybe both? Suitcases being packed, unpacked, repacked, all without actually leaving the room. Bella sitting in a Miami hotel with a woman who appeared to be her mother. Bella in her father's garage, opening up a cell phone and using tools on it. Bella sitting in a chair, clutching a cigarette lighter in one hand and a can of aerosol hairspray in another. Chief Swan standing over Bella in the local medical lab as she had her blood drawn. _Bella following Edward into a in a sunny field of flowers—_

"Alice, what the _hell?_" Edward shouted.

"I should ask you the same question," she hissed back. "What did you _say _to her when you took her home today?"

"Nothing!" Edward swore. "We talked about _her_ most of the time!"

"What's going on?" Esme asked.

"Damned if I know," Alice answered. "Edward, you had to have told her _something._"

"Nothing, I swear!" he panicked. "I told her my birth parents died, I asked her what kind of dating restrictions her parents had, and I told her I wasn't going to the beach this weekend because I was going hiking. That's it!"

"That can't be _it,_" Alice growled. By now everyone except Carlisle (knuckle deep in someone's gall bladder surgery) had gathered around to listen. Even Rosalie had come back inside, eager to be part of any scene in which Edward was being dressed down or otherwise on display as the family idiot. "What else did you say?"

_I told her I kept the Pez dispenser._

"I told her I wouldn't be in school tomorrow. Now please, what did she do after I left her house?" Edward asked, desperate for any kind of explanation. Preferably something that _didn't_ involve Pez.

xXxXx

Mrs. Nguyen wasn't a mean person—she was just set in her ways. Having unwillingly spent part of her life in a South Vietnamese re-education camp, her ways did not include the American need to be friendly all the time. This made it a little unpleasant for customers to deal with her at her flower shop, but fortunately her American-born children had taken over that part of the business long ago. Right now, though, her problem was with Don Carlos himself.

"What you mean, you run out!" she complained in accented (but perfectly clear) English. "How I make _tiết canh _without main ingredient? Who else buy but me?"

"I'm sorry," Mr. Carlos apologized. Again. "I sold it all. If I'd known you wanted some today, I would have saved it for you. How about goose instead of duck?"

Bella watched with minimal interest as the butcher disappeared into the back room—she had purchases of her own to select. She had two packages of Lil Smokies from the refrigerated shelf in her hand basket and was eyeing the chicken wings when Mr. Carlos came back, not carrying a slaughtered bird as she'd been expecting, but two large, plain white Styrofoam cups.

"Again, I apologize," Don Carlos said to Mrs. Nguyen, not noticing Bella's slight swoon as he carefully inserted the cups into a brown paper bag. "Normally you're the only one who specifically orders duck blood, but one of the Cullen kids came by a little while ago and cleaned me out."

xXxXx

"Now please," Edward was saying, "what did she do after I left her house?"

"How should I know?" Alice retorted. "I see the future, not the _past._ Obviously I had other things to think about at the time, what with Benjamin Franklin over here rediscovering electricity." This earned a growl from her sister, though the effect was somewhat lessened by the obstruction in Rose's mouth. "The real problem is you, Edward! What the bloody hell are you doing, taking her to a _secluded field—?_"

"I haven't taken her anywhere," Edward yelled. "I haven't yet convinced her to _let_ me take her anywhere. For heaven's sake, all I did was follow her home in my car! She wouldn't even let me drive her to her house!"

"Then how do you explain all that weird shit I saw?" Alice screeched back.

"You see weird crap all the time," Rosalie said gleefully, then stuck her hand back in her mouth.

"What _exactly_ did you see?" Jasper demanded.

After Alice explained everything aloud (leaving out the bit about Edward being in the sunlight), Esme asked her son, "Did she happen to mention going out of town?"

"No," Edward replied. "She refused to tell me anything about that weekend."

"Well then maybe instead of inserting yourself into her life, you should leave her alone and mind your own _fuckin'_ business," Jasper seethed. "Because the only thing I see wrong in that whole series of visions is _you._" It was more than that, though—Edward's presence made everything else take on a different context, whereas if he hadn't been a part of it at all, nothing else Alice saw would have bothered anyone except Edward in the least.

"Let's just go," Emmett said sensibly. "Last time this happened it took a few hours for the visions to settle down. Let's get something to eat, and we can call Alice later and see what's going on. If it all comes down to nothing, you'll have _lost_ nothing. And if it all turns into hell, you'll already be out of town."

Edward nodded, snatching up the away-bag his mother had packed for him and wondering what a Mardi Gras mask had to do with anything. _Great,_ he sighed. _Now I'll never be able to enjoy my food._

Half an hour after he left Forks, he was already calling Alice.

"I don't see anything concrete yet," she said. "It hasn't been long enough."

Forty minutes after that, he called again.

"Would you cut it out? It's all still vague and crazy."

Twenty minutes later…

"Stop bugging me!"

An hour after that…

xXxXx

When Charlie got home from work at precisely 6:32, he was greeted not with dinner, but with the sound of the washer and dryer running, and the scents of all-purpose surface cleaner, furniture polish, and laundry soap in the air. He stopped short at the sight of his daughter pacing back and forth, occasionally wiping a picture frame or a table top with a rag that, from the looks of it, used to be his holeyest pair of underwear.

In the early days of his marriage to Renee, any time his wife felt stressed, even before the pregnancy and the nesting instinct, she rearranged furniture or painted walls and cabinets, which was how he wound up with the ugly yellow color scheme in his kitchen. Bella, Charlie realized, was an anxiety-cleaner.

"Something wrong?" he asked cautiously.

"Charlie," Bella nearly shouted, hopping in surprise. For once she remembered to land on her right foot (the longer leg), the second-most important thing she ever learned from three years of ballet lessons. "I have a question, and I couldn't find the answer online. It's _very_ important, so please think carefully."

"Okay…" Charlie said carefully. He decided it would be best not to remove his gun belt just yet. "What's your question?"

Bella took a deep breath. "Are there any hikers or hunters in the Goat Rocks Wilderness this time of year?"

xXxXx

"I thought it might firm up once her father came home from work, but it hasn't," Alice sighed. "Rosalie suggested that she's thinking about going away for Spring Break. The dance falls on the same weekend the holiday starts, and everybody in Forks knows her mother lives in Florida, so it makes sense." Although this wasn't ideal for Edward—he couldn't stand the thought of Bella being away that long—it was at least a normal enough activity that he was able to calm down. For a while, anyway. "All I can tell you with any degree of certainty," Alice went on, "is what she's about to do right now: have dinner with the Chief. Now will you _please_ stop calling? You're freaking Jasper out."

_Freaking Jasper out_ was code for _making Jasper think he needs to get involved._ Edward promptly hung up, fuming to himself about Bella going away and wondering if he could possibly find an excuse to be in Miami that week. He could pretend he'd had Spring Break plans of his own, and perhaps she'd allow him to spend time with her. With any luck, she'd even be happy to see him.

xXxXx

Charlie blinked. _Goat Rocks? Why is she worried about a hiking trail in a public park?_ "Are you on medication I don't know about?"

"Dad!" Bella groaned impatiently (and, Charlie didn't think he was imagining it, more than a little fretfully). "Just answer the question! Are there _people _there?"

"Okay, okay!" Charlie replied, taking a step back and resisting the instinct to put his finger on his holster lock, like he normally did around crazy people.

xXxXx

"I knew we should have just run instead of driving," Emmett complained. He wasn't usually the complaining type, but Edward wasn't particularly fun on this trip, and it was a four-hour drive from Forks to the little town closest to Goat Rocks. If they'd run, at least they would have been likely to enjoy themselves and snag a little snack on the way to dinner. Plus, the Jeep went through gas like a wino goes through a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck.

"Like it matters," Edward said, rolling his eyes the way only an obscenely rich person who does not give two shits about rising gas prices can do. "You weren't going to find a bear this early. This time of year is _prime _for mountain lions on the Peninsula, and we can't hunt the ones in our own back yard because it's cougar season for the human hunters in the Coastal Zone."

In their efforts not only to avoid negatively impacting the environment, but also to avoid crossing the paths of humans in the wilderness, all the Cullens made a point of memorizing the annually published Big Game Hunting Season manuals and small game pamphlets for every state or province they hunted in, a daunting mental feat even for the brightest of minds. Hunting seasons varied by location, animal type, weapon type, whether or not hunting dogs were allowed, what to do if your pet falcon killed the wrong species out of season…basically it was a huge pain in the ass. It often limited the family's dining possibilities in ways that even the staunchest dieters found inconvenient—you'd think that with a million acres of wildlife habitat in Washington, chasing down some actual wildlife wouldn't be so damned complicated.

"No," Edward continued, "we have to trek all the way out to the backcountry and look for wayward goats. _Goats,_ Emmett. You'll have to forgive me if I'm having a little trouble getting excited about it."

"You suck," Emmett informed his brother. "I wish you and this girl would start banging already so you'll lighten the hell up."

Edward didn't reply to this scandalous remark for two reasons: 1) after Jasper's comments on Edward's behavior, Edward knew he didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to moral outrage over a lack of propriety, and 2) he was beginning to wonder what 'banging' actually felt like. Hearing everyone's thoughts when they had sex wasn't quite the same thing; he was sure he was missing out. With a sigh, he gave up on conversation and spent the remainder of the drive thinking about _her _smile_._ Not to mention her bra strap. He wondered if her underwear matched—apparently that was a big deal. Other men's fantasies nearly always featured matching undergarments, but Edward had never consciously thought about it until…well, until right now.

When night had fallen and Edward was tracking the scent of a diseased mountain lion who had wandered around hunting elderly herbivores, Alice finally called his satellite phone_._

"What have you got for me, Alice?"

"Jasper's decided to believe me when I say that human teenagers are prone to impulsive behavior," she assured him, "and since most of what I saw before isn't directly related to us, he agreed that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with our secret. He accused the two of us of being reactionary and prone to hysterics."

"Thank you for that," Edward said gratefully. As far as Edward was concerned, Jasper could believe whatever he wanted to as long as Bella remained unharmed, never mind that Jasper was _absolutely right_ about Alice's and Edward's personalities_._

"I can't see Bella's plans for next weekend at all," she continued. "She seems to have no idea what she's doing, or even where she'll be."

"Okay," Edward said, disappointed, "well, what _can _you see? Is she all right? She's not hurt, is she?"

"She _seems_ fine, but I can only see as far as tomorrow night," Alice answered. Sometimes her psychic power was so conveniently, _ridiculously_ accurate that it required near-religious explanations. Right now, however, her visions were vague, ephemeral, nonsensical…and downright _infuriating._ Clearly there was a serious Schrödinger's Cat-like indeterminacy flaw that Bella was somehow unintentionally exploiting. That, or the universe was fucking with Alice now, too. "I see…a hound dog," she said, confused and irritated. "And a card game."

_Wonderful,_ Edward groaned to himself. _I take a girl home after she faints, and her life turns into one of those Cassius Coolidge "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings._ "Christ, Alice, what _happened?_"

xXxXx

"My father took me hiking in Goat Rocks when I was a kid," Charlie explained to his daughter, "but not in March. The trails aren't even hikable until mid-July because there's still too much snow, so the park shuts down until summer. And they don't allow hunters because it's part of a national forest."

"What about poachers?" Bella demanded. "Is that a problem there?"

"Like I said," Charlie answered slowly, "the trails _cannot be hiked _right now. I suppose, in theory, a poacher _could_ snowshoe around up there, but parts of the trail are dangerous even in _good_ weather. It would be too risky, and all he'd catch would be a bunch of wild goats." _And maybe a bear_, he decided not to say—bears were still hibernating this early in the year anyway.

His daughter seemed visibly relieved by the information he'd given, which only confused him even more. "Are you going to explain what this is all about?" Charlie asked her.

"No," she said, abruptly adding, "I didn't cook supper, so we're going to the diner tonight. You're driving. Let me just go grab my purse."

Charlie watched in extreme puzzlement as his daughter bounded up the stairs. _First stun guns and police dogs, now hikers and hunters. _"Women," he muttered to himself.

In her room, Bella snatched up her purse and quietly shoved her partially-packed suitcase under her bed. There was still time to decide what to do, after she completely calmed down and had a chance to think rationally instead of letting herself get carried away with planning a variety of increasingly drastic measures. She might not need to evacuate to Florida after all.

**A/N: Surprise! Goat Rocks Wilderness is part of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and is open to the public for hiking, camping, horseback riding, wildlife viewing, mountain biking, and motorcycle riding. I had to make up the part about being closed down for the winter—for all I know, it's open for snowshoeing. Gee, if only Ms. Meyer had consulted the internet or a guidebook for something _besides_ the average rainfall of Coastal Washington.**


	15. Poker Face

**Previously: Bella figured this vampy shit out on her own. Took her long enough. But, since she didn't have anyone explaining how Edward was one of those cute and fluffy "vegetarian" vampires instead of a cold-blooded killer, she was more than a little wigged out. Understandably so.**

Poker Face

_I will not freak out._

_I will not freak out._

_Oh shit, there's his sister!_

Bella spent most of her Friday at school in close proximity to friends. She preferred Angela, who didn't ask her too many questions, but Jessica was also a good choice, as she tended to prattle about unrelated things without requiring much of a response. Jessica's primary concern was the dance, and whether she was obligated to go with Mike since she'd already asked him, or if she should just ask someone else since Mike never did get back to her with a final yes or no after being metaphorically bitch-slapped in public. Bella, who now knew (thanks to Edward) that Mike was getting a hard time from the other guys, had a surge of pity for the poor bastard. Mike may have been a little bit of a jerk, but if that was the worst anyone could say about him…Bella told her friend that taking Mike to the dance and showing him that there were no hard feelings would be doing him a favor. Jessica took this and ran with it, quickly working out in her head how she'd get him to come around to liking her as more than a friend (and hopefully treating her with a little more respect) if she played nice.

For the most part, however, Bella didn't care what was going on next weekend, not the dance, not the Purimshpiel—as far as she was concerned, there was no plan except getting through today without losing her shit. She'd hardly slept at all the previous night, worried that her window might silently open if she closed her eyes. While it was a relief that Edward and his older brother weren't at school today, that still left her with three Cullens in the vicinity: the tiny one, the _shiksa_ goddess, and the tall brother who looked constipated. She got the distinct impression that they were all staring at her.

Actually, it wasn't an impression. They were _openly_ staring at her; they didn't look away even when she occasionally met their eyes.

"Well?" Alice murmured to her husband.

"There are too many people around for me to single out one girl," Jasper replied quietly. "And they're all teenagers, so it's like an enormous wall of hormones and anxiety."

"What about you?" Rosalie asked her sister. "Any visions at all?"

"I can't see past tomorrow," Alice complained. "I _think _there's a ten percent chance she's still going to the beach on the reservation, but it blurs out once she gets there. This is so annoying! How does she _do _that?"

"Settle down," Jasper suggested (and quickly enforced with a little effort). "I had to strategize battles for a hundred years without the aid of a psychic. We use our eyes and ears now. Maybe she'll say something."

"Not likely," Rosalie doubted. "She's kept her mouth shut for two months." Rosalie wouldn't admit it, but she was actually quite impressed with Bella's ability to keep a secret so far. If only the poor child was a little better coordinated—she might make a good spy.

"Why don't I have any classes with her?" Alice demanded. "There are only 75 people in the entire junior class, and she and I take all the same subjects. Statistically, shouldn't I have at least _one _class period with her?"

"Yes, you should," Rosalie calculated. "The way a class schedule is _supposed _to be made up in a school this size, you would either have most of your classes together like she does with Jessica, or none at all. But since this school insists on using the garbage-can model of bureaucracy, nothing is organized and the odds aren't stacked one way or another, so the probability of your having only one or two classes with her should be better." If Rosalie weren't a firm atheist, she would have said some dipshit goddess with a terrible sense of humor had arranged Bella's schedule just so.

Jasper resisted a powerful urge to commit a human behavior, namely smacking his palm against his forehead. "Look at what we've been reduced to. Next time we move, I'm not signing up for this high school bullshit."

"Jasper," Alice began to protest.

"Don't bother arguing with me," he cut her off. "I've had enough. I hate these crowds of walking meatbags, I hate pretending to be sixteen when I look older than twenty, and most of all, I hate that right now my brother has put us in the position of having to stalk his human for him while he's away. This is asinine. After I graduate this May, I'm taking the next decade off."

"Do whatever you want," Rosalie replied airily. "Go shave your head and live in a monastery if it makes you happy. But do it later. Right now we need to know what's going on with this human."

"How can you even say that with a straight face?" Jasper demanded.

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "We all listened to Edward's conversation with Bella at lunch yesterday—there's no point in denying it. Am I the only one who paid any attention to _her _side of the discussion?"

"No." Jasper's eyes flickered to the ground, remembering.

"I heard," Alice agreed, her eyes still following Bella, whose own eyes were ringed with circles so dark that _she _might almost be mistaken for an underfed vampire from a distance.

"How can it be that Edward honestly doesn't see what's right in front of him?" Rose asked.

"His ability has made him complacent, and thus incompetent," Jasper decided. "He's out of his depth trying to interpret meanings on his own. The girl certainly dropped enough hints, and he couldn't decipher a single one."

"Well, shit," Alice swore, "could he _be _more ridiculous?" She immediately feigned a pained expression and deepened her voice. "I'm totally normal. I'm just different. And I can't provide a straight answer to a simple question. I'm completely obsessed with you. Oh, did that make you uncomfortable? Quick, let's talk about some other guy I'm jealous of!" Returning to her normal voice, she added, "God, no wonder he doesn't know what she's talking about. He barely knows what _he's _talking about."

"Don't you think we should tell him something, then?" Rose fussed.

"I tried that yesterday," Jasper reminded her. "He doesn't want to hear anything that's not good news or a positive affirmation of what he's already doing. Telling him she's suspicious would be like talking to a wall." _A broody, infantile, self-centered, lovestruck wall._

"How much do you think she knows?" Rosalie asked seriously.

"Enough to speculate that Edward isn't human," Jasper answered. "Not so much that she doesn't trust Carlisle to treat her at the hospital."

"Is it enough to justify—?"

Alice interrupted her sister with a low, threatening growl. Not because her Sight was finally kicking in, but because Rosalie's mind worked in highly predictable patterns.

"Not that I haven't considered that, but we gave our word," Jasper told his sister. "I won't break my brother's trust the minute his back is turned, even if he _is _an asshole. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but it does to me."

"It does," Rosalie acquiesced. "But she's a wild card. The threat of exposure is real. We've never been as close to it as we are right now."

"Of course we have," Jasper corrected her. "Haven't you been paying attention for the last fifty years? Do you realize how many times we've literally gotten away with murder? You think it's easy to manufacture an alternate cause of death for an exsanguinated body? It's not like the old days, when you could just kill a handy goat and smear its blood on the floor to fool the cops. They _check _that kind of thing nowadays. God damn forensics nerds…"

"Enough, you two," Alice ordered. "Killing her is out of the question, so let's just drop it."

"You're right," Rosalie agreed, though her voice was anything but agreeable. "The real question is whether she knows enough to make trouble, and whether or not she's likely to tell anyone. Because if she does, and we can't kill her, then our only options are to either destroy her credibility or get the _hell _out of here."

"She's going to find out sooner or later," Alice predicted.

"So you've had a new vision?" Rose asked.

Alice shrugged. "Do I need one? Edward is already on a certain track, and he's not planning on deviating from it." She knew this because she'd been trying to get him on this track for two months. "The truth is eventually going to become a necessity—it's not like they can carry on a long-term relationship without her knowing about it."

"Certainly not if she's ever going to become one of us," Jasper added, thinking of Alice's initial predictions.

"Don't remind me," Rosalie groaned. Other than the injury to her vanity, Rosalie didn't actually have any grounds to dislike Bella as a person. But at 96 years old, Rosalie had reached an age when she disliked change. Their family was, in her estimation, quite large enough, and she had no wish to acclimate to having one more dissenting voice in the house to contend with, one more sibling clamoring for attention and resources, and one _more _person taking Edward's side in every argument. Bella was trouble enough already without having spoken to anyone but Edward or Carlisle.

Jasper, who could sense Rosalie's distress, reluctance, and overall monumentalism (something he'd experienced and mostly overcome), felt a little reassurance was in order. "If it's any consolation, I'm confident that she won't let Edward get away with his selfish behavior. She certainly doesn't make it easy for him right now."

"I feel like we're missing something," Alice muttered, watching Bella's shaking hands drop a spork. Most people didn't know it, but Carlisle _invented _the Spork. His human pen pal Edward Lear, misunderstanding the verbal description, referred to it in nonsense poetry as the "runcible spoon."

"You always say that when your ability doesn't give you the answers you want," Rosalie replied, though she eyeballed Bella as well. _She seems to be having a bad hair day._ With a little self-satisfied smile, she mentally added, _I have no idea what that's like._

"There's more to it than that," Alice insisted. "Maybe she's still not feeling well. She did _faint _yesterday."

"Whatever it is," Jasper remarked, "there's nothing we can do about it right now."

"I could go talk to her," Alice said hopefully. She'd not yet let go of the idea that Bella would become her best friend.

Which was why Jasper said, "I think it's a little soon for that, sugar. Let her dictate the pace before she feels the full brunt of…well, you."

"Jasper!" Alice smacked his hand.

Rosalie sighed impatiently. "You're a teeny-tiny, clothing-obsessed, porcupine-haired, fortune-telling killing machine. That's a lot to take in even for another vampire. Heaven knows _I _thought you were crazy when we first met."

"If we spook her," Jasper said calmly, "Edward will have our heads. You know how he gets about her, and I'd just as soon skip the uproar."

Alice reluctantly agreed—though the temptation to interfere was great, she had to admit that butting in on someone's fledgling relationship wasn't going to improve its chance of success. It sure didn't help any when she kept inviting Edward to go on "couples hunts" back when she was trying to set him up with Maggie O'Hara of the Irish Coven, a.k.a. Maggie Polygraph, a.k.a. Big-Nosed Margaret.

What Alice didn't know was that if she'd so much as brushed Bella's arm in a doorway, the poor human would have jumped four feet in the air. "Spooked" didn't even _begin _to cover it. Part of the reason Bella listened to Jessica at all was because it kept her from constantly thinking

_blood_

all damn day.

_This is ridiculous,_ Bella told herself. _I already knew about the blood thing. I smelled it in his cup the other day. I just…didn't seriously think it meant vampires. Oh god, I'm so stupid, why the hell did I think __**space aliens **__made more sense? Goddamn H.P. Lovecraft novels. What if these Cullens really do track down poachers and deer stalkers? What if the duck blood thing is like some kind of appetizer? What if they think I'm delicious? What if Edward decided to try a free sample the other night in my room? No, no, I'd have felt weak from blood loss when I woke up. What am I saying? Edward wouldn't hurt me, he saved me. Unless he was saving me __**for later! **__How could he do this to me? No, that's wrong, he isn't 'doing' this, it's just what he is, he can't help it. But what the hell am I supposed to do about it?_

"_Harah, ani ayefa…" _she muttered to herself. _Shit, I'm tired…_

"Bella," Angela finally asked after a particularly stressful biology period, "are you all right?"

"Oh," Bella replied, surprised. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little out of it."

Angela smiled kindly. "Don't worry," she assured her friend. "I'm sure he misses you, too."

"Huh?" Bella said abruptly (and mentally smacking herself for sounding like such a fool).

"Edward," Angela explained. "We all saw you at lunch yesterday." She smiled. "I don't know what you two were talking about, but you sort of reminded me of my parents."

Bemused, Bella asked, "How so?"

"Even in the middle of an argument, my dad gets that look on his face," Angela laughed. "Like my mom hangs the moon. That's how Edward looks at you." Shaking her head, she thought, _It's bad enough my dad tries to pattern all his relationships after the characters of _Seventh Heaven_. If I had to sit through one more lunch period watching these two take turns staring at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking, I might have had to start eating lunch outside in the rain. I wonder if anyone else thinks that about me watching Ben?_

"I never really noticed," Bella muttered, wondering what was in her own face when she looked at Edward, and if it was ever hurtful. She may have been frightened and confused, but that didn't mean she wanted to hurt his _feelings._ Still, knowing what she knew, how could she be sure anything Edward had ever said to her was real? How was she supposed to reconcile her own feelings with this terrifying reality? How did she protect herself from both physical danger and emotional wounds?

What if he killed someone?

What if it didn't matter?

What if he was lying about the Pez dispenser?

Why was _that_ an equally pertinent question?

Angela, if she were ever to become a vampire, would possess a highly unusual gift: seeing into someone's soul. As a human, she was sufficiently intuitive to look at Bella and quote Eleanor Roosevelt. "We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all."

Bella managed a smile. _If only that were my only problem._

"Hey, I was wondering about that book you told me about," she changed the subject (but not really). "The epic romance werewolf poem."

Angela smiled a little. "_Sharp Teeth_?"

"Yeah, that one."

"I haven't finished reading it yet. And it's not really about _just_ the couple. It's actually a complex story."

"Oh." Bella looked down. "I was just curious. Do you think the couple will have a happy ending?"

"I don't know yet," Angela shrugged. "One's a human, the other's a monster with issues. How happy can the ending _be?_"

* * *

Charlie didn't know what he did to deserve such a helpful, supportive daughter, but he was glad he had her.

"Your bet, Neil."

"Twenty!"

"This game has a five dollar limit."

"Oh…I mean, yeah, I meant twenty cents." Neil, one of the local park rangers and a friend of Charlie's for the last fifteen years, was good at many things, but bluffing was not one of them.

"I fold."

"Fold."

"Fold."

"Sorry, Neil."

"Damn it." At Charlie's _ahem,_ Neil added, "Beg your pardon, Bella."

"Not at all," she smiled.

Bella wasn't normally so domestic—or rather, she was domestically _capable,_ but she wasn't usually so Martha Stewart about it. She'd catered parties for her mother's friends back in Phoenix, but those were all a bunch of single ladies who liked to talk about dating, sex, and how shitty it was that men still got paid more than women for doing the same job, only badly. Renee's friends got up and got their _own_ drinks, thank you very much, because while they appreciated Bella's efforts to cook something that was actually edible, that didn't mean she was their waitress, too, and it certainly didn't mean they were about to ask a thirteen-year-old girl to mix margaritas. Renee was the hostess, and if they needed something, they made a point of asking her.

When Bella came to Forks and realized she was going to have to deal with Poker Night With The Guys once a month, she made it clear to Charlie that she was fine with making snacks, but there would be no 'Bring me another drink, honey,' from his friends, because it was disrespectful and demeaning. Charlie agreed with this, but just to make sure he wouldn't forget, she told him about a few of her mother's recipes that _looked_ like normal cupcakes but actually contained things like soy sauce, cheddar cheese, and Ghost chiles.

But tonight Bella was everything a good hostess should be: invisible when the guys had their serious gambling faces on but present whenever they needed anything, supplying them what appeared to be perpetually full plates of all their favorite foods, from mozzarella cheese sticks to homemade kolaches to lime-and-tequila flavored chicken wings. And most importantly, she kept the beer coming. Charlie had already won forty dollars from his drunken friends and the night wasn't halfway done yet.

"But it's like I was _saying,_" Neil continued, taking his small winnings and leaving a new ante, "Maggie won't _tell_ me what's bothering her. She just makes that little 'hmph' sound and leaves the room, and I'm like, 'What'd I do?'"

Harry Clearwater asked him, "Did you forget your anniversary?"

Neil thought about this while Jeremy (one of Charlie's lieutenants) dealt a new hand. "No, we were married in the summer time."

"Birthday?" Charlie suggested.

Neil shook his head. "Not 'til next month. I remember because it's usually the day after the income tax deadline."

"When's the last time you took her out anywhere or gave her flowers?" Elwood asked; his mind _always _went directly to flowers. Poor Elwood, named after one of the Blues Brothers. It was his parents' idea of fun, but what did you expect from a family of morticians?

"If you have to think about it," Elwood went on when Neil didn't have an answer, "it's been too long."

Bella rolled her eyes when her back was turned. She'd been expecting more macho discussions as she plied these men with can after can of Ranier Beer, but _nooo._ Get 'em all sauced up, and Guys Night turned into a chick-fest. So much for stereotypes. Maybe they just weren't at the right level of inebriation yet.

"Anyone need another beer?" she offered. Five hands went up.

Two rounds of beer later the guys had come to the Loud, Raucous Laughter stage, mixed in with a nice dose of No Brain-to-Mouth Filter Syndrome. Deciding that Neil was drunk enough at last, Bella ventured a question of her own.

"What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen on the job?"

The air was immediately thick with "horror" stories about logging accidents, bear attacks, car wrecks, crop circles (Jeremy immediately laughed, confessing that the crop circles were actually his Senior Prank), and one story about two stoners who were found dangling upside down in a tree, dazed and confused, after they'd attempted to enhance their high by forcing all their marijuana-saturated blood to rest in their heads. They didn't mince words about the gross stuff; after all, they were talking to Isabella "The Bloodhound" Swan, the girl who successfully substituted for a cadaver dog at the age of _nine._ She was a cop's kid, made of strong stuff, and Charlie was always bragging about how she took after her old man.

"Any weird animal mutilations?" she asked the park ranger.

"I swear, I get that question every time I visit the schools for career day," he said, his voice watery. Bella concealed a frown, realizing that she'd exerted all this effort cajoling these people with copious amounts of alcohol and junk food when she could have just asked them straight out. "You see it occasionally, but the thing is, when an animal dies of natural causes, the carcass generally gets picked at pretty quickly by carrion-eaters. It's not just the hunters and poachers out there killing Bambi—it's the bears and the mountain lions and wolves, too, and hawks and buzzards, and insects…it's that whole circle of life shit. Like that Disney cartoon. Nature is just one thing feeding on another. And what the animals don't get, the moist air decays pretty quickly. Not like in the desert."

Bella nodded, remembering the roadkill in Arizona, how the sand preserved what the circling birds overhead didn't eat. Turning to Elwood, she said, "You ever see any bizarre murders or weird causes of death?"

"Sweetheart, you gotta stop watching crime shows with your dad," the mortician laughed. (Privately, Charlie was beginning to think the same thing.) "That stuff doesn't happen here. Not in Forks, not for generations. Now Seattle, on the other hand, has its fair share of wackos, but it's been, what, seven years since their last serial killer…?"

Unsatisfied, Bella went up to bed not long after, claiming she was tired. Charlie, who'd won over a hundred dollars, promised to clean up his own mess the next day. The look on his daughter's face as she left the room worried him; between that and her strange behavior the last few days, not to mention that she suddenly seemed to like Mark's dog enough to voluntarily keep it for the weekend, Charlie feared that she might feel lonely and unappreciated. He decided to share his winnings with her. Unbeknownst to either of them, Harry Clearwater pondered the evening's conversation as well, though he would not remember enough of it the following morning to reach any conclusion other than vague unease. The primary reason he came to Charlie's poker nights was because he wanted to heal the rift between Chief Swan and Billy Black—nothing else about these get-togethers usually seemed important enough to remember. It should be noted that, had Harry seen Izzy the Bloodhound's initial reaction to the new scent in Bella's room (namely whining and crying until Bella opened up every window on the top floor to air it out even more than she already had), no amount of alcohol would have made him forget a damn thing.

As for Bella herself, she was at a loss. Her instincts told her the Cullens were concealing their potential for danger, even _murder,_ notwithstanding Dr. Cullen's reputation as a first-class healer. Her head clucked that she'd gained no proof of anything by pumping Charlie's friends for information, and she'd come to the conclusion that the Cullens wouldn't hurt anyone so close to their home—it would be too obvious—and that in fact, she had no proof that they were hurting anyone at all. But it was her heart, and even her skin, that remembered Edward's gentle touch, that reminded her that she was only alive because of him. Trouble was, she wasn't sure how much wrongdoing she could excuse just because he'd saved her life. Wasn't there a point where she had to say _enough is enough?_

And would that point occur before or after she had a chance to make out with him?

* * *

"Dad, are you _sure _you don't mind keeping Izzy for me?" Bella asked again. "It's an outdoor thing. I'm sure nobody will care if I bring a dog."

"I'm sure," Charlie repeated, setting the last wet dish on the drying rack before he grabbed a broom to sweep up crumbs from the floor. "You're going to be with a bunch of friends; you won't want to be managing her leash the whole time. This way you can stay out a little later if you want and I can feed her on time. Now go on, get out of here."

Bella examined her father's face a few extra seconds (a habit she had picked up over the years that generally told her what her mother was _really _thinking), then nodded and handed over Izzy's leash and her plush toy. Charlie sharing his poker winnings from the night before was a pleasant enough surprise. Offering to take Izzy to the station for the day was just such a _relief._ The poor dog had slept fitfully, which in turn bothered Bella, who kept waking up all night thinking that at any minute, Izzy was going to start growling at the window. Nothing actually happened, but after a night like that, Bella knew that both she and the dog needed a break.

In fact, Bella and Izzy were not the only ones in that house grateful for a reprieve. While Bella and her friends were hiking over to the tide pools on La Push, Charlie was in his office, relieving a little stress by petting Izzy (the stories were true—petting a dog definitely brought down his blood pressure). But stroking a dog's head didn't change anything, so Charlie finished up some paperwork and stared at his cell phone for a while before he sighed and made a call.

"Hello?"

"Hi Renee. It's Charlie."

"Charlie?" There was a lot of background noise, like she was at one of her husband's practice games; Renee asked Charlie to hold while she found a quiet spot. It bugged him that his ex-wife sounded so surprised to hear from him. Then again, he rarely called her just to talk. Why should he? She was remarried, and it wasn't like she wanted to keep up an ongoing friendship with her ex.

"What's going on," Renee wanted to know. "Is Bella okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine; the school secretary called and said she fainted the other day, but—"

"She_ what?"_

"Calm down." Charlie looked at a photo frame on his desk—himself, Renee, and an infant Bella in front of a Christmas tree and a menorah. "They were just blood typing. You know how she gets."

"Oh," Renee sighed, relieved. She knew all about Bella's tendency to sicken at the smell of fresh blood—it was a family trait going back many generations on Renee's side. "Is she feeling better?"

"Looks that way. She's at a beach bonfire right now. But…" Charlie sighed. "I don't know, Renee. Lately she's been acting weird."

"Weird how?"

"I don't know how to describe it," the chief said. "She's started asking me strange questions about hiking trails and weapons, she cooked up a feast last night for all my friends instead of hanging out with any friends of her own on a Friday, and I swear I've heard her pacing at night."

"Charlie," Renee said, remembering his famous poker nights from the first year they were married, "by any chance, did you _ask _her to cook for your friends?"

"Yes," Charlie admitted.

"Then why are you unhappy that she did exactly what you asked her to do?"

"Well," Charlie said awkwardly, "I'm not _unhappy _about it. It's just kind of strange that she took to it with so much…gusto, that's the word. I asked her to make some little easy snack, and next thing I know it's like she's catering a Super Bowl party."

"I realize you never particularly cared for my cooking," Renee clucked, "but I do occasionally _feel _like making a big meal. Sometimes she does too."

"This is not just about food. There's the pacing," he said again, trying to emphasize it. "And that chanting thing she does sometimes—meditation or prayer or whatever. It just goes on and on. She's not sleeping well."

"Okay," Renee said slowly. She was somewhat familiar with Bella's Buddhist practices—they tended to escalate when Bella was under stress. But stress could come from just about anywhere at that age. "Anything else? Are her grades slipping?"

"No, her grades are fine, although I'm anticipating a conduct cut. She told off some boy at school a few days ago," Charlie remembered.

"Why, what'd he do?" Renee demanded. _And why didn't she e-mail me about it?_

"Apparently he asked her to be his date for a Sadie Hawkins dance that another girl had already invited him to."

"I'd tell him off, too," Renee smirked.

"Oh, I was proud," Charlie smiled, glad he and his ex could agree about something. "But with everything else…I'm worried about her."

"You want to know the funny part?" Renee mused. "You and Bella are always going on about how _I_ worry too much."

"Can we not make this about you?"

"Oh boy," Renee sighed, feeling like she did when she spent an hour trying to teach a skill that nobody in the class could wrap their heads around. "Don't any of your friends have teenage daughters?"

"Yeah, sure." Several of his close friends had daughters, but those girls were all either a few years older than Bella or many years younger. Billy would have been the ideal person to talk to, he having gone through the horror of raising _twin_ teenage girls without their mother, but talking to him was an avenue Charlie just wasn't ready to walk down today.

Seeing that her ex-husband was not getting the picture, Renee realized she was going to have to spell it out for him. "This is about a _crush,_ Charlie. God, don't you remember what it was like to be young?"

"I'm not sure it's that simple," Charlie said doubtfully. "She never talks about boys."

"Do you really expect her to? You're her father. She's not going to tell _you_ about stuff like that." It was with some effort that she didn't add a sarcastic 'Duh.'

"But hon—Renee," Charlie corrected himself quickly, "some of this stuff doesn't add up to 'boy.' She's not acting giddy or happy, she's acting nervous and out of character. For god's sake, she offered to babysit a _dog._"

"I see," Renee said, still smiling. "Any chance the dog belongs to…a boy?"

"It belongs to one of my officers," Charlie huffed, "who is ten years her senior and has a girlfriend out of town, as she is well aware. That's _why s_he offered to dog-sit."

"Then either Bella has a crush on your officer," Renee insisted, "or she's got a thing for a dog-lover. Possibly one who likes hunting or hiking. Did she take the dog with her to the beach today?"

"No, but she seemed like she wanted to..."

"See? There you go. I never thought 'manly outdoorsman' was her type, but I guess—"

"Forget it," Charlie snapped. "Just forget I even said anything."

"What, you're mad at me now?" Renee frowned. "I'm not allowed to have a sense of humor?"

"It took a lot for me to call you and ask you about this stuff," Charlie said, upset and suddenly very tired. "Something is _wrong_ with our child, and she won't tell me what's going on. I'm legitimately concerned about it, but you just flat out refuse to take it seriously."

"How would you know if something's seriously wrong with her or when she's behaving 'out of character'?" Renee began arguing. "You hardly know her. If you _did, _you'd know that meditation and asking questions are just things she does, and that she doesn't open up to just anyone about her feelings."

"And I suppose you know _everything_ about her," Charlie replied bitterly, feeling the beginning of a long-familiar argument over Renee's decision to take his only child fifteen hundred miles away to the fucking _desert_ where he almost never got to see her. "You sure sounded surprised about her bitching out some guy in the middle of class. Don't you think maybe there are a few other things she's been leaving out in her e-mails?"

"I'm not saying I know _everything—"_

"No, but you're acting like it. I'm doing the best I can here, and you just dismiss me—"

"How many times have I been worried out of my mind only to have _you _dismiss _me—?"_

"How many times have you sat there crying and doing _nothing_ until I flew down and picked up the pieces for you?" Charlie reminded her. "Or have you forgotten the time Bella fell off her bike and broke her arm when you weren't paying attention to her?"

"How dare you? Kids fall, they break bones, and sometimes moms panic. That's normal. A teenage girl acting strange around her dad when there's a new boy in her life is _normal!_"

"Forcing your daughter and your ex-husband to take care of you isn't normal, Renee! Remember when Bella had to call me down there because your dipshit boyfriend started threatening you? You don't have sense enough to know when something's abnormal in your own goddamn relationship!"

"_Fuck you, Charlie!"_

* * *

When Bella and the others returned from the tide pools to the site of their campfire (Bella only suffering minimal hand scrapes), they were welcomed by a much larger group. The newcomers were Quileute teenagers, a friendly bunch, actually. The oldest introduced everyone. She would have found him unremarkable except that he kept his hair shorter than everyone else from the rez, he was freakin' _huge_, and when Bella walked past him her nose caught the unmistakable scent of dog. But, seeing as they'd passed two wandering Malamutes and a long-haired chihuahua on the way to the beach, and in fact Bella was still trying to get the smell of Mark's dog out of her own hair, she didn't think anything of it. She was more interested in why the fourteen-year-old boy three places to the left kept staring at her.

"Hi," she addressed him directly. "Have we met?"

"Yeah," the boy said, getting up to come sit with her. "When we were little. I'm Jacob Black. Our dads are friends…sort of," he faltered. He wasn't sure how to categorize the unresolved disagreement Billy and Charlie were having. "You used to come here when we were kids. You'd remember my sisters, Rachel and Rebecca."

"Oh yeah," Bella smiled politely, recalling the twin girls who she was expected to play with while Charlie and Billy went fishing. The last time she'd seen them they were both 'fifteen and a _half'_ and beautiful and didn't want thirteen-year-old Bella tagging along on their dates. "Are they still around?"

"Rachel's away at college," Jacob told her. "Rebecca totally married a surfer. She lives in Hawai'i."

"Wow." Bella didn't know whether to be impressed or not. At nineteen, moving away to Hawai'i was certainly an adventure worth having. But marrying at nineteen had been the mistake Renee never quite got over, and Bella had a resulting bias against young marriages. "Your dad must miss them."

"He does," was all Jacob said, because it was the easy answer. To some extent it was true, but when both his sisters left La Push the year before, Billy seemed…relieved. He absolutely _lived_ for their phone calls and letters, but he never encouraged them to come home for visits, even though Rebecca was only a three-hour drive away. Billy claimed plane tickets were too expensive for Rachel and that he didn't like Rebecca riding the Greyhound and the Clallam Transit buses, but Jacob knew it was about them being candy-stripers at Forks Hospital, and the massive fight they'd put up when Billy banned them from volunteering there two years ago.

"So," Bella said, "is your dad the one my dad bought the truck from?"

"Yeah," Jacob smiled. "I totally rebuilt the engine. How's it running?"

"Still chugging away," Bella replied, grinning back. "Oh, but it does this weird popping thing when I—"

"Hey Bella," Lauren Mallory called from across the campfire, "why isn't _Edward_ here tonight?"

At the mention of this name, Bella stiffened. She hadn't quite decided what to do about Edward yet, and to be honest, she'd been looking forward to spending the day thinking about something else for a while. Now her relaxation had been spoiled because Lauren wouldn't keep her damn mouth shut. As was often the case with Lauren, it wasn't so much the question itself that was irritating as the way she said it: dripping with disdain.

_Seriously,_ Bella wondered, _what's the point in bringing Edward up? What does she think it's going to accomplish?_ Clearly Bella wasn't making time with Tyler—in fact, she was going out of her way to avoid him. If anything, taunting Bella about another guy in _front _of Tyler only made him think about Bella rather than forget her, and being a heinous bitch wasn't going to make Lauren look like a better choice.

Bella, who was tired of putting up with Lauren's bullshit in polite silence, was prevented from asking why Lauren's Add-A-Cup bra inserts weren't there tonight by some timely male posturing.

"Who the hell invited Cullen anyway?" Mike complained. He may have largely gotten over Bella telling him off in class (after all, he did kind of deserve it), but Edward calling him an assclown and whisking Bella away after her fainting spell was still a sore subject for Mike.

"You mean Dr. Cullen's family?" Sam, the big dude who smelled of dog, obviously knew _exactly_ who everyone was talking about, and what's more, he had a definite and uncompromising opinion about it. "The Cullens don't come here."

Lauren started to say something, but the look on Sam's face made her think twice. She turned back to Tyler, grumbling to herself about how rude some people could be.

_Interesting,_ Bella decided. Once Bella Swan found something interesting, she wasn't one to let it go. "Jacob," she said casually, "let's go for a walk."

"Yeah, okay," he agreed, trying not to look at Sam too much. Later that night, when Sam relayed the event to his girlfriend Leah, she pointed out that if he wanted white people to feel welcome and spend more of their money at the reservation, he shouldn't make a habit of broadcasting the tribe's ongoing, _private_ feud with the town's beloved surgeon. Sam, of course, huffed at her because she just didn't understand. Leah told him she didn't understand because he wasn't explaining his reasoning. Rather than provide the sought-after explanation, he stormed off and silently cursed the Cullens for making him into this…thing that couldn't share the truth with his own girlfriend, for some reason. Seriously, what was the reason again? He was supposed to be _in charge,_ and he didn't even fucking know.

Bella, meanwhile, waited until she and Jacob were near the shoreline before she started talking. She thought about how she wanted to approach the subject. Normally she was very direct, but she wasn't sure if Jacob would think she was interrogating him. After all, she hardly knew him.

"How's your father doing these days?" she asked, figuring it was a normal enough topic.

Jacob shrugged. "He keeps busy with council business."

"Why haven't I seen your dad at the house?" Billy was supposedly Charlie's lifelong friend ever since childhood. Bella had spent part of nearly every summer with his daughters up until right before she hit fourteen, and yet he'd not been to the house even _once_ since she moved to Forks, not even for Poker Night.

"Well…" Jacob said awkwardly, "they aren't getting along so great right now."

"Huh." Bella thought for a moment. "They must have gotten along well enough when your dad sold my dad the truck."

Jake rubbed the back of his neck with his palm. Not many people knew this, but Billy actually charged Charlie twenty-five percent more than anyone else had offered, and the only reason he got away with it was because he managed to convince Charlie that the engine was 'practically new.' Jacob had listened to the bargaining talk from the front porch, answering questions about how he'd repaired the engine but otherwise forbidden from speaking. The only thing that kept Jake from losing respect for his father was the knowledge of exactly how much time, sweat, and money Jacob himself had put into working on the damned old thing for the last three years. Do you have any _idea _how expensive it is to rebore a cylinder for somebody whose only source of income is mowing lawns in a state with a short growing season? Do you realize how hard it is for a disabled single parent with no job to provide tools for his son, monthly spending money for his college-bound daughter, and a wedding for his other daughter? Or at least that's what Jake told himself whenever he thought through the situation and came to a conclusion about his dad that he didn't like.

Seeing that Jacob was uncomfortable with _this_ topic, Bella correctly guessed that he'd be willing to talk about nearly anything else. "So what did that guy mean, 'the Cullens don't come here'?"

"Ah, that," Jacob groaned.

"He wasn't exactly subtle," Bella pointed out.

"No, he wasn't," Jacob sighed. _Nice going, Sam._

Maybe it was because he felt guilty about the price of the truck, or maybe it was because Bella was the only girl who'd ever paid him any attention, but Jacob decided to tell her something he'd never told any white person in his life. So he found a conveniently located driftwood tree and plopped down, telling Bella about the origin of his people, descended from wolves. Bella, who had grown up listening to her people's own oral history, maintained a respectful and attentive posture, as if she were at temple on a high holy day. It was the polite thing to do from her perspective, but Jacob was shifting into a scary story about werewolves who served as protectors of the tribe, and he didn't understand why Bella wasn't getting scared. He did notice that her interest seemed piqued when he mentioned the Cold Ones.

"I don't understand. What _are_ the Cold Ones?" Bella asked.

"Blood-drinkers," Jacob said, still trying to sound spooky. "Your people would call them vampires."

Bella resisted the urge to say something there. She knew he didn't mean anything by it, but the 'your people' thing bothered her. _Her_ people called vampires something else entirely—the _aluqah_, or another word she was certain he couldn't pronounce—but that wasn't the point. She knew all _goyim_ weren't exactly alike, and she knew all native tribes weren't the identical. The same went for 'pale faces,' and since he was the one pointing out differences, she felt it would have been nice not to be treated as just another cultureless white girl.

The fact was, she and Jacob were both English-speaking, TV-watching, 21st-century Americans with at least _some_ shared culture. So if she called a creature a vampire, then she was reasonably certain that he probably did, too. This 'blood drinker' stuff was probably how the story was told in a formal tribe setting, or perhaps it was an affectation meant to impress her, but she doubted very much that a boy who said 'awesome' and 'totally' every five minutes used the terms 'blood-drinker' or 'Cold One' on a regular basis. 'Hey, did you catch that blood-drinker movie at the drive-in?' 'I said pass me a cold one, not a Cold One.' 'Dude, my girlfriend totally broke up with me because I'm not supportive or some shit. She said I was an emotional blood-drinker.'

It was only seconds after these offended thoughts that she realized, _Holy shit, he's really talking about vampires like they're an actual thing._ Apparently there was no such thing as a coincidence in or around the town of Forks. "Seriously?"

Jacob smiled, trying to look sly.

"And they're your tribe's enemies?"

"All but one clan," Jacob nodded.

"Wait," Bella interrupted. "There's more than one _clan?_" _What is this, a vampire vacation spot? Like Mount Rushmore, but for Blood Drinkers?_

"Yeah, I guess," Jacob said, trying to get back to his story. "Four generations ago my great-grandfather came across some…civilized Cold Ones. They claimed to feed only on the blood of animals."

"Animals…" Bella echoed, thinking. "Like, exclusively? Would that actually _work?_" Considering Edward's whole family seemed to have been chugging livestock blood from Don Carlos on a regular basis _at school,_ all signs pointed to _Yes. _Or maybe she just wanted to believe it worked that way.

Jacob shrugged. "I guess so. Because of it, we made a treaty with them: if they stayed off our land and didn't hurt anyone, we'd leave them alone and not reveal their secret to the pale-faces."

"What does this have to do with the Cullens in particular?" Thinking of Sam, Bella asked, "You mean the Cullens are related to these Cold Ones?"

"No," Jacob smiled eerily, "they're the _same _Cold Ones."

Bella blinked. "Seriously? The _same_ ones."

"That's the story," Jacob nodded again. "There were only five back then. They have a new male and female now, but the rest are all the same. The doctor's name is the same. Or so the legend says."

"I see," Bella nodded, her eyebrows pursing together. "Do you believe all that?"

Jake looked at his hands. "It was a long time ago. I don't know how much of that story was real and how much was exaggerated for effect. Even if you could let yourself believe in vampires at all, it seems kind of dumb that the _same _vampires would come back _here_. I mean, parts of Washington were already settled by white families even back then, so you'd think somebody in a nursing home would recognize the doctor." Shaking his head to ward off such thoughts, Jacob smiled. "I think it's really just the story of some beef we had with Dr. Cullen's grandpa for encroaching on our territory. We're really not supposed to tell it to outsiders, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell all your friends." Looking at her expectantly, he said, "But it makes a great camping story, doesn't it?"

Alas, except for the part where apparently there was a large national population of vampires families visiting La Push like it was their equivalent to Yosemite National Park, the story wasn't even remotely scary to someone who sat next to an actual vampire at school every single day and had survived a vampire sneaking into her house. Jacob didn't tell it particularly well, either. But it was interesting, at least, and it provided an independent confirmation of her suspicions. "Definitely," Bella answered. "And I won't tell anyone else. Wouldn't want you getting sued for slander." After a beat, she added, "But I guess the Cullen family must already know all about it."

Now it was Jacob's turn to blink. It was bad enough he revealed a story that was only supposed to be told in private tribal gatherings. He didn't want other people writing a lame-ass, poorly written book about it or anything. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Bella explained, "your friend said the Cullens don't come here at all. Either someone told them not to come to La Push when they moved here, or they already knew they would be unwelcome."

"Hmm," was all Jake said. He didn't really want to get into the conflict between the tribal council and Forks Community Hospital—that couldn't be rendered into a campfire story to smile and shiver at. It would come across as childish, immoral, or possibly even racist, and it involved his father directly. Harry Clearwater was the only council member to vote against the hospital boycott (his wife and son would never have survived premature labor and an emergency c-section without that place), which was why _he_ was still welcome at Charlie's house. "No telling."

Jacob decided that while Bella was sort of nice to look at, talking to her was exhausting. Any other girl would have been talking about Adam Sandler movies or something normal, but Bella just _had _to hit on every single topic that made Jacob uncomfortable. The only way she could have made it worse was if she'd asked him about his boner. And what was that she said about getting sued for slander? _Shit. Can that doctor sue our whole tribe? I'm sure he's rich enough to have a good lawyer. Damn it, Dad, you had to make a big friggin' deal about a Cullen coming to Forks. How do we even __**know**__ if it's the same family? There's like a million people named Cullen in this country._ "You want to head back to the fire?"

"Sure." Bella followed Jacob in silence, her mind racing. If she'd ever thought life in Washington would be boring, she certainly knew better now.

* * *

That night Charlie seemed even quieter than usual, if that was possible, though he looked pleased when Bella said she had fun. After taking Izzy outside for a walk and showering the smell of salty air and driftwood smoke off her own body, Bella checked her e-mail. She was surprised by the tone of one message in particular.

_Dear Bella,_

_Things are going well for us. Phil's enjoying spring training, although so far the only team showing any interest is Akron, Ohio. Still, hope springs eternal._

_It's been a while since I heard from you. I know you're probably super busy with school and everything, but I hope I get to talk to you soon. Your dad said you were at a beach party today. That's WONDERFUL! Did you have a good time? Meet anyone special?_

_If you ever want to talk to me about __**anything**_, _just call. Or write. Send a telegram, smoke signals, whatever. I love you, I miss you, and I'm always here for you, no matter what._

_Love,_

_Mom_


	16. More Cowbell

_Sorry for the long wait. Hope you enjoy this one!_

_From "Midnight Sun Chapter 7: Melody"_

More Cowbell

_I can't keep doing this,_ Edward scolded himself. _Jasper's absolutely right—I have no business invading her space like this._

In point of fact, no one "officially" supported this particular act of breaking and entering, although Alice did not have a problem with it. (Alice also did not think silently encouraging Edward's illegal, risky, potentially life-threatening activity was disloyal to the girl who would be her "best friend" someday. For an intelligent vampire, she was a rather clueless person.) Even Carlisle, who didn't want to get involved in the situation, made a point of reiterating that this was not the way an honorable gentleman behaved toward a lady in a civilized society. Edward was inclined to agree in principle, but his principles seemed to be on holiday. After a long weekend of hunting with Emmett and another stern talking-to from various nosy members of his family (who seemed content to do no more than _talk_), Edward was scaling the exterior wall of Bella's house, unhindered and unobserved. Only this time, he brought along oil to silence the slight metallic squeak of the window track.

What he did not anticipate were the wind chimes Bella hung inside her room by the window (big, loud ones purchased on Sunday from Tilly's Nursery and Garden Supply with Bella's half of Charlie's poker winnings). The chimes were hidden from Edward's sight by the old, ugly, opaque winter curtains (handmade by Grandma Swan) that Charlie had been talked into hanging up over the weekend.

_Oh, hell._ Edward managed to avoid making more than a few low, quickly muffled chimes and curtain-rustling sounds, but it still wasn't the perfectly silent entry he'd been shooting for. Fortunately, Bella hadn't moved. She faced the wall, perfectly still except for slow, even breaths.

And an accelerated heart rate.

_Shit! She's awake!_

Edward froze, one leg still hanging out the window, unable to free himself of the upholstery fabric, metal cylinders, and fishing line without alerting Bella to his presence. It wasn't one of his more graceful moments; he was thankful no one in his family was around to see it (except Alice, who was probably watching this whole thing unfold in a highly amusing vision, _damn it_).

Bella stirred, but did not turn around.

_Please go back to sleep, please go back to sleep, please go back to sleep…_

"Mom," Bella groaned, "Kitchen's on fire _again?_"

Edward waited, fearful but patient. _I suppose if I could dream, and if it were about fire, my heart would race, too. That's probably all it was: a dream._

When Sleeping Beauty was still again and all seemed well to Prince Charming, he brought his foot the rest of the way in and silently closed the window. _Right. A little talking and moving, but that seems to be normal for her. Should be smooth sailing from here on out._

He kept on thinking that until he tried to take a step away from the window and felt something sticking to the bottom of his shoes.

_Glue traps? Does she have a rodent problem? I don't smell any mice…_

He looked around, taking in more changes in the room—the dog-smell was back, a new cordless phone took up residence on the bedside nightstand, the books had all been shelved, and there were no more shoes or clothing cluttering the floor. Edward sat in the rocking chair, the better to remove the sticky cardstock from his shoe (_I hope she has another one around here somewhere—this one's obviously ruined_). Unfortunately, when he leaned back in the chair he heard a loud, sharp _snap_ somewhere behind him.

_Now what?_

It seemed Bella did indeed suspect mice, or possibly even rats—two large wooden traps were positioned behind her chair, just under the back end of the rockers.

Once again, Edward watched carefully as Bella snuggled further under her blanket and muttered something that suspiciously resembled 'other trucker.'

_She's shivering,_ he realized. _I should get her an extra blanket. I'll just have to put it back before I leave. _It was only a split second between deciding this and moving across the room to her bedroom door, but he really should have taken the full second to pay attention, because Bella had hung an ancient, flea-market-quality cowbell from the door, and those things aren't exactly noiseless.

_What the hell is going on around here?_

After gingerly removing the offending bell and searching the hall closet for what he needed, Edward carefully covered Bella's sleeping body.

He did not, however, touch her.

Not because he didn't want to. _God, _did he want to. But Edward knew there was a line he'd already crossed just by being in her room, and whether he admitted it to anyone else or not, he knew what he was doing was disrespectful. To go even further, to touch her without invitation…it wasn't even about the temptation to lean down and bite her. That was something he would feel for the rest of Bella's life, no matter what the situation.

It was about trying to be a man who deserved this woman.

So Edward finished draping Bella with the old, ugly, homemade quilt (which, fittingly enough, matched the old, ugly, homemade curtains) and moved away. He watched her for what seemed like a long time and only a few seconds all at once (though it only ten minutes). For that brief time, he let himself feel happy, because he was exactly where he wanted to be most in the world. But it wasn't real. She was not his, and he had no right to pretend it was his place to watch over her in this manner. So he listened with his ears and mind, just to be sure Charlie was deeply asleep, before he whispered to the love of his life:

"I'm sorry. I owe you better than this. I'll go."

But just as he moved to stand, Bella breathed, "Oh, Edward," and turned her body toward the sound of his voice.

When she opened her eyes, there was no one standing by her bed or sitting in her rocking chair.

There was, however, someone sitting in her closet. Again.

This someone had also discovered where Bella was keeping the rest of her glue traps. The entire floor of her closet was lined with them, sticky side up. And all of her clothes were gone.

_Honestly, why doesn't she just have her father call an exterminator?_

Bella, meanwhile, sat up, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. After a few excruciatingly long seconds, she looked like she might just crawl under her blankets and go back to sleep. Except that she was fishing for the socks she'd kicked off. Once her feet were covered, she wrapped Edward's quilt around herself, padded to her desk, and fired up Spilsbury (her computer, named after the father of modern forensics).

Edward stared. _Is she kidding?_

Not only was she _not_ kidding, she was clicking on a big blue-and-white "S" icon on her desktop and pulling a little headset out of a desk drawer. It had a microphone attachment.

"Mom," she said into the mic after everything had finished loading, "what are you doing up so late? Isn't it five in the morning there?"

Edward could just hear a tinny voice reply, "I'm not up late, I'm up _early._ You're the one awake at two a.m. on a school night."

Skyping. The middle of the night, right before a freaking Monday, and Bella was on _Skype._ With her _mother._

"Thanks again for the Mardi Gras mask you sent," Bella said. "It's perfect."

"Oh good," Renee gushed. "I'm glad you like it! I went to this parade with Phil…"

After a few more minutes of chatter, during which Edward settled down awkwardly in an attempt to get as few glue traps on him as possible, Bella abruptly threw a curveball. Just when Edward thought he might actually get to hear some useful information, like what exactly the Mardi Gras mask was supposed to be perfect _for_, or why Bella wanted paraffin, a hip flask, and six bars of Toblerone in her next care package, he heard Bella say, _"Zug gornisht."_

Literally this Yiddish phrase translated to _say nothing,_ but Bella used it to indicate an eavesdropper. Renee, who over the years had held many similar conversations with Bella every time she visited Charlie, waited while Bella got up and checked the hallway for her father's listening ears.

"I really need to talk to you," Bella said a moment later in Hebrew (slowly, though, as she hadn't engaged in a full Hebrew conversation in some time). "There's a boy…"

"I knew it," Renee replied (also in Hebrew—she'd found temporary work teaching four-year-olds in a Hebrew School at a Miami synagogue, so she wasn't the slightest bit rusty). "And this boy comes with a problem, yes?"

"Don't they all?"

"Tell me."

A long sigh. "Do you believe there's anything about a person's life or past that cannot be forgiven?"

"Violent crime against innocent people," Renee answered immediately. "That should be obvious." It was a very good thing Edward could not understand their conversation, because he'd committed violent crime for several years back in the late nineteen-twenties, and while his victims hadn't been innocent, hearing this judgment would have sent him five steps backward in the pursuit of a relationship.

"Besides that," Bella insisted. Sneaking into a girl's room was a crime, yes, but it wasn't _violent._ "Is there anything that would make someone…irredeemable?"

"I have a nice long _list_ of irredeemable flaws I won't put up with, everything from Holocaust denial to driving angry," Renee told her daughter. "But I've been in and out of adult relationships with grown men for the past twenty years, and I know what I can't tolerate. You have to decide for yourself what you can live with."

"You're not helping," Bella pointed out.

"Fine," Renee sighed. "This is my biggest one, took me _forever _to finally figure out. I think it applies to you. You must be able to respect each other exactly as you are. Without respect, it won't matter how much you love each other, because the partnership won't last. Or worse—it won't be a partnership. It'll be something unhealthy, and I don't want that for you."

"But Ma" Bella sighed, "how am I supposed to _know_ exactly who he is when he won't let me in?"

Renee looked at the grainy video of her daughter's facial expression, noting the set to Bella's jaw, the fire in her eyes, the worry, the question, the care. "Oh, I think you know him just fine."

"But Ma—"

"Don't tell me I'm too silly or I'm too old or I'd never understand," Renee cut her short. "I know _you_. You don't come to me with this stuff until you've gone over it ten times in your head and nearly made up your mind, _if_ you come to me at all. I'm the last step before you do what you already decided to do."

"No, this time I really _don't_ know what I should do," Bella insisted.

"Who said anything about what you _should_ do?" Renee asked. "_Should_ is a Charlie-word, like when he tells people they _should_ re-elect him, or when he told me I _should_ just stop complaining about Washington weather and get some rain boots, or that time he—"

"Mom, I get it," Bella interrupted. Leave it to Renee to turn a conversation about Bella's boy trouble into a tirade about Charlie's faults. If she would have just pulled her head out of her own ass, Renee might have heard what her daughter was trying to tell her and taken it into consideration before she opened her mouth.

"My point is," Renee continued, "what you should do doesn't necessarily correspond to what you're actually going to do, or even to what the best choice is _for you_. Especially when you're in love."

Bella thought her heart might stop. "When you're…in…"

"Love, Bella. You're in love."

"I'm—not—how do you…?"

Renee only shook her head. "Trust me just this once, _mommellah_. This isn't like the other times. That look on your face tonight? I've seen it before, and I know what it means." It was exactly the same look she saw on Charlie's face when he proposed. And the first time he came to California for a visit after the divorce.

_Whoever this boy is,_ Renee mused, _I hope he realizes what a gift my girl is giving him._

In point of fact, the boy was silently freaking the hell out, because while it was obvious that _something_ major was going on with Bella, what with her heart jumping all over the place and her weird little gasps, she had yet to utter one word about it in a language he could even remotely understand.

_Note to self: get on Amazon and order Yiddish for Dummies. Wait, was that Yiddish or Hebrew? Are they switching back and forth? How am I supposed to eavesdrop? Damn it!_

After Bella finished gaping like a suffocating goldfish, the two women wished each other a good night. Bella sat in thought for a few moments more before shutting down the computer and crawling back into bed. She curled up, swathing herself in the hand-quilted blanket Edward had placed on her, but she did not go to sleep. Instead she stared at her clock-lit wind chime, just contemplating.

Renee had always teased Bella for "being born thirty-five and getting more middle-aged every year," never mind that thirty-five is _not_ middle aged (just ask anyone in their thirties). A middle-aged woman would not put up with Edward's crap—and admittedly, Bella didn't put up with a lot of rude things he did or said. A middle-aged woman would be calling the cops, or at least a lawyer—Bella lived with a cop, and she'd already asked Charlie for a Taser.

But for all her drive and responsibility, Bella was _not_ a forty-year-old woman. First, she believed in something impossible. Second, she was just brave enough and idealistic enough to give the impossible a chance. And third, while she was wily enough to set up indicator traps around her room, she was also naive enough to think it was best to deal with the problem entirely by herself instead of telling her father what was going on in his own damn house.

In other words, she was perfect for Edward.

Not that either of them realized all this, precisely. Mostly Bella just lay there and tried to think of what she would like to say to Edward.

"I like your hair, but it's not flattering from _every_ angle," she said (in English this time). Edward immediately began trying to smooth it back. "No, that's not polite. How about… 'Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?'"

Edward shut his eyes and bit his tongue so he wouldn't be able to reply. _It's certainly not a fruit._

"No," Bella was saying, "that's just embarrassing."

Edward had to agree. Although 'banana' was actually pretty flattering compared to 'roll of dimes.'

"Hmm…" _I know what you are,_ Bella tried._ You never go out in the sunlight, your eyes change color, and sometimes you speak like you're from a different time—_"No," she decided. "I can't say that. That just sounds stupid." _Most of that stuff doesn't even add up to 'vampire' when you put it together._

_What?_ Edward wanted to shout. _What sounds stupid?_

She thought and tried again. _I know what you are. As long as you don't try to snack on me, I'm okay with it._

"No, no, no," she sighed, driving Edward to bite his own fingers._ That implies I'm okay with him snacking on other people._

After a few more minutes' consideration, she said aloud:

"Edward, I know you think I'll freak out. But I won't. Stop hiding from me. Whenever you're ready, I'm right here." With a nod, she added, "That's what I'll tell him."

Satisfied with this, she turned over, closed her eyes, and slowed her breathing, leaving Edward to ponder what she meant. When Edward was reasonably certain Bella had fallen asleep, he detached the glue traps from his butt and climbed out of the closet.

_Now where does she keep the spare traps?_

There was nothing to be done about the quilt, but he at least made it appear that nothing _large_ had disturbed the rest of the room. He stole a few of Charlie's hairs from the brush in the bathroom and sprinkled them over the traps he'd sat on—glue traps weren't effective enough to hold an adult rat anyway. He put the cowbell back on the door knob, and he even remembered to reset the spring-loaded wooden traps (though he noticed that she'd forgotten to add bait).

"Good night, Bella," Edward whispered as he closed the window on the way out. "Sweet dreams." He would not enter her room again, but he decided it would be wise to at least patrol the woods around her house, just in case of stray mountain lions _(because you never know)_.

"Good night, Edward," Bella murmured back after he'd gone, smiling to herself as she inhaled the scent of Edward on her quilt. Maybe he wasn't quite as intolerable as she thought.


	17. Thoughts They Cannot Defend

_You may notice a difference in continuity after the La Push visit. Meyer had Bella go all day Monday and most of Tuesday without seeing Edward. Probably because she wanted that stupid "Bella falls asleep reading Jane Austen in her backyard so that Edward can spy on her from the trees" scene. You know, the part of the book where Bella spends all day Monday hoping Edward will show up at school, and he never does, so she basically does nothing except go outside in 50 degree weather, plop her blanket down on the wet ground, and pretend that she's getting a tan while she moons over a boy? And Edward sneaks up on her in broad daylight, because that's supposed to be romantic or some shit? That whole section is a waste of time. Monday is the last sunny day in my version._

* * *

_From "Twilight Chapter 7: Nightmare" and "Midnight Sun Chapter 8: Ghost"_

Thoughts They Cannot Defend

"Earth to Bella. You there?"

Bella blinked and returned her eyes to her own lunch table, rather than the empty one across the cafeteria. "I'm sorry, I was distracted. You were saying?"

Jessica suppressed her urge to smirk knowingly. She could afford to be gracious, though, because Bella's advice about re-inviting Mike to the dance paid off—they'd gone out to dinner and a free outdoor concert over the weekend and had a pretty good time. "I was asking if you wanted to go dress shopping with us this afternoon."

"Oh." Bella looked down at the other end of their table where Lauren sat talking animatedly without ever once stopping to listen to anyone around her. "Who's going?"

"Just Angela and me," Jessica assured her.

Angela, who followed Bella's gaze, whispered to her. "I asked Jess not to invite Lauren. She's been extra bitchy lately, and I just don't want to deal with it."

Bella's eyes popped, and she looked at her friend. "Did you just curse?"

Angela shrugged. Lauren may or may not have called Angela a 'bland little church mouse' during first period, apparently oblivious to the fact that the church mouse in question sat two seats behind her and was not hard of hearing in the least. Everyone around Angela seemed to think a preacher's daughter only fit into one of two categories: nice good girl or rebellious hellcat. Her mother once told her, when it was just the two of them, that she was free to figure out who she was on her own, independent of her father's expectations or beliefs. Which is fine to _say_, but a lifetime in the same town meant everyone she'd ever met had expectations of her, not just Daddy. Seeing the Cullens keep to themselves without succumbing to peer pressure for two years, and then meeting Bella, who clearly didn't have a problem with expressing herself, was just the inspiration Angela needed to shake herself up a little. Because while Angela wasn't by any means a trouble maker, and in fact she loved her family very much, that didn't mean she wanted anyone to put her in a box. Especially not Lauren.

"Hell yeah," Angela added, liking the way the phrase rolled off the tongue.

"Sweet," Bella smiled. After all the stress of the previous week, a sunny afternoon spent doing something normal sounded like a relaxing way to finish off her day. Looking back at Jessica, she said, "My pick-up truck won't really hold three people and keep the shopping bags dry. But I can pitch in for gas if we take your car."

Meanwhile, in a thicket not far away…

"What are you doing?"

"Good afternoon to you, too. What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're standing under a tree, staring at the back side of the school."

"Then that's what I'm doing."

"You do realize that if anyone here knew your _actual_ age, you'd be arrested for child endangerment or the like."

"Not that anyone can see me, but it also _looks _like I'm seventeen years old, same age as nearly a third of the student population."

"Great. Instead of being a creepy old man, you're just a young, truant stalker. That's _much _better."

"You've made your point, Jasper," Edward sighed. "Many times over, I might add. I already told you I won't be entering her room at night anymore."

"I'm sure you told yourself you wouldn't climb into her room in the first place, right before you did it anyway."

Edward, who had done exactly that, said, "That was a completely different situation."

"Sure it was. _Now _you understand why hanging around in her room is wrong, but you're okay with watching her at school."

"Can't you just let me have this?"

"It's not for me to 'let' you have anything."

"Since when did you acquire a set of human morals? You don't think of humans as _people,_ but now you're sitting in judgment over the way I treat one of them? Suddenly they have value to you? You don't even _like _Bella."

Jasper frowned, looking at the school—he hated to be near so much tension every bit as much as Edward hated proximity to so many thoughts, but unlike Edward, the fresh air, distance, and closed doors helped Jasper immensely. "I neither like nor dislike her. That's not what this is about."

"You're right, it's not," Edward agreed, his voice tightly controlled. "This is none of your business. It's no one else's, either, and you can tell the women I said so when you report back to them."

"Unfortunately I need to make it my business," Jasper answered evenly. Edward could sense his brother's attempt to be reasonable rather than emotional. "You're in love, and you don't know how it's done."

Edward paused thoughtfully before he spoke. "I didn't realize there was a right or wrong way to 'do' love."

"How many murderers did you kill who started out exactly like this?"

Sighing, Edward replied, "Not that you don't have a point, but that's not what I'm here for."

"Tell me why you're here, then." At Edward's skeptical eyebrow, Jasper added, "Honestly, I want to know."

After another moment, Edward asked, "What's the longest you've ever gone without seeing Alice?"

Jasper's eyes and thoughts immediately moved in the direction of their house, where Alice was entertaining Peter and Charlotte while he slipped away to talk some sense into his brother. "Four days." _Very long days._

"While you were separated," Edward probed, "did you think for even one minute that she'd come to harm, and that you wouldn't be there to protect her?"

"I suppose," Jasper reflected. "But Alice is strong, fast, and just as deadly as I am."

"Bella isn't." Edward's eyes swept the grounds and street for the thirteenth time, looking for anything that could even remotely be construed as a threat: rabid squirrel, concealed gopher hole on the P.E. field, rat climbing into the Big Red Truck to chew on the battery cables, drunken truck driver headed straight for the science building. Not that he could _do _anything about any of these hazards, what with the bright afternoon sun imprisoning him in the shade. "Six million ways for a human to die, and over the weekend I realized I could only rule out about forty percent of them."

Jasper, who had only ever considered the dangers of vampire proximity, said nothing.

"You go away for a long weekend," Edward continued, "and you're anxious to get back to Alice, but you're okay. You know she's all right. You know she loves you, and that she'll be waiting for you to come home. I don't have any of that, not even some assurance of her feelings. So yes," he turned to look at his brother, "it _is _different. Bella could die while I'm away, from something as simple as another car accident or a tree falling on her house or a tiny little _germ._ She could meet someone else, someone who could give her all the things in life I can't. She could get fed up and go back home to the desert—all of her clothes were missing from her closet this morning, and I still don't know for certain what it means. Any of those things could happen before I've even had so much as a chance to tell her how I feel or see her again, hear her voice with my own ears. You've _never _had such worries with Alice, whereas I'm going to have them for the rest of Bella's natural life. Pardon me if the best way I have to alleviate the stress is to sit here, at a respectful distance, and watch her go about her day."

Mollified, Jasper considered all this carefully. "I suppose I understand, but…"

"But what?"

"This _isn't _the best way to alleviate your stress."

"Hunting doesn't help with anything but thirst…oh. You don't mean hunting."

"It's a simple solution."

"I can't do it, Jasper."

"You'll never be happy if you don't."

"I've never expected to feel happy."

"You _prefer_ to feel miserable, then?"

"No, just…content."

"This is no way to live your life."

"You say that from the secure position of having a mate. Trust me: this is an improvement over the last century or so."

"Alice believes the girl _is_ your mate. Or will be."

"Alice would believe in Santa Claus if she had a vision of a fat lumberjack in red pajamas stuck in a chimney." It was a deflection, and not a particularly effective one, either—Edward's heart soared at the thought of being mated to Bella. He couldn't conceal that from his brother.

"So…this," Jasper said, ignoring the crack about Alice instead of letting it divert his attention. "Watching from the sidelines. Is it supposed to be enough?"

"It isn't _supposed_ to be anything. It simply is."

"That's hardly fair."

"Nothing's ever been fair since the day my mother died."

"I don't mean to you, Edward."

"To the _girl_? Coming from the Cullen with the highest body count under his belt, that's almost funny." Neither vampire smiled.

"And yet it's true."

"You think I haven't considered that aspect?"

"Have you?" Jasper asked.

"I've given it a lot more thought than you have."

"Are you ever going to do anything besides _think _about it?"

"You're a man of action. I can appreciate that. But you aren't just talking about easing the burden our physical differences create. I can't take so much away from her."

"You already are taking something from her, just in a different way."

"Perhaps," Edward conceded. "But at least my way, she can walk away from this unscathed. What you and Alice are proposing…no. I can't alter her life so permanently. I won't."

"As you've already pointed out," Jasper observed, "there are six million ways she can die. Six million and one, actually, if you include yourself. 'Unscathed' isn't a realistic expectation."

Edward finally turned and looked at his brother. "You want to kill her, you want her alive. You want me to leave her alone, you want me to turn her. What side are you _on?_"

Jasper made a frustrated sound. "Whichever side keeps the rest of us safe, just so long as you _pick _one. Did you think I was here to be supportive of your fence-straddling bullshit?"

Edward heard himself growling, "You're an absolute bastard."

"You're the one who took 'ignoring her' off the table, not me. Someone has to make the hard choices in this family."

"If you so much as touch her—"

"Your threats are tiresome and unnecessary," Jasper interrupted. "I couldn't change her myself if I tried."

"Then what is your purpose here? To _annoy_ me into turning her?"

"Actually, I wanted to tell you something."

Edward waited.

"Idiot man-child

Confuses a house of cards

For a foundation."

Edward snorted. "Did you just _haiku_ at me?"

"Stop pretending to miss the point, you foolish boy," Jasper snapped. "She's human. You're not. Your relationship with her is barely beginning, and it's already built on a lie. Every time you open your mouth, you say something weird that only makes her more curious. Do you think she's stupid?"

"Hardly. It's obvious that she's suspicious. I _told _her I'm different. But that's as far as it went."

"Then what makes you think she's never going to notice that you aren't aging?"

"I thought you understood," Edward sighed. "She won't have time to notice."

Jasper stared at him, confused. "What the devil are you talking about?" Whatever it was, Alice hadn't foreseen it.

"You don't know her," Edward said simply. "This girl…she can do _anything._ She's brilliant, savvy, driven—she's got so much more ahead of her than this."

"She's stubborn, too smart for her own good, and unable to leave well enough alone," Jasper retorted. _Rather like you, actually._ "She's infatuated with you and she already knows too much. You really think she'll ever stop digging? Christ, have you even been listening to her?"

_I know you think I'll freak out,_ Edward remembered her saying, _but I won't._

"Once she leaves Forks, she'll leave all this behind," Edward said smoothly. "She can have an education, a career, a family…a brilliant future."

"But then you…" Jasper started. "You don't intend to be part of it."

"A year and a half," Edward murmured. "I get eighteen months, and then she's off to college. It's a natural point of separation for someone her age." Staring at the biology classroom again, he said, "I can fake something resembling humanity for eighteen months."

"Alice won't like this," Jasper grumbled quietly.

"Alice would do well to spend less time planning my romance," Edward muttered poisonously, "and more time thinking about how to conduct her own." Anyone could see that Jasper was growing tired of his wife putting herself in the middle of Edward's love life—in point of fact, he'd been tired of it fifteen years ago, when she tried to 'guide' Edward in the path of an unoccupied female vampire on a trip to Spain and somehow inadvertently caused the entire family to have to flee from their beautiful Andalusian hotel via sewer. Edward knew that part of the reason Jasper was getting directly involved this time was because, in the back of his mind, he longed for the old days when Alice's primary concern was her own husband, not finding a wife for her brother.

"Don't make this about me," Jasper hissed. "We're talking about you and Bella Swan. After everything you said about loving her and worrying over her for the rest of her natural life, you would bond with her and let her go. Your own mate. As easy as that." Jasper looked away in disgust. No matter how irritated Jasper ever got, he never once seriously considered _leaving_ Alice.

"I never said it would be easy," Edward replied, his tumult of emotions belying his calm delivery. "It's the right thing to do." _Or at least as close to it as I can get without walking away right now._

"Falling in love with her and then breaking her damn heart is the right thing to do?" Jasper hoped appealing to Edward's concern for the girl's emotional well-being would snap him out of this idiocy.

"Humans don't feel heartbreak like ours," Edward said dismissively.

Jasper had an urge to correct this assumption—he knew perfectly well how intense a teen's feelings were compared to a thirty-something whose hormones had leveled out. But on this point, he knew it was senseless to argue; Edward had never been able to understand the difference between a thought and a feeling, or how you could use one to conceal the other, or how even one _moment _of turmoil could alter the entire flow of someone's life, even a human's. _Especially_ a human's. "They do _feel _heartbreak, I guarantee that much," he tried anyway. "It's like a poison in their blood. Why else do you think I hate being around them?"

"She doesn't love me the way I love her," Edward continued stubbornly.

Jasper lifted an eyebrow. "Fifteen minutes ago you were whining that you didn't know _how _she felt. You're leaving something out, aren't you?" Jasper asked.

Edward thought, _Pez dispenser._

He also thought, _She said whenever I'm ready, she'll be right there. I know that's not love, but no one has ever said that to me before and meant it._

"I'm telling you, she couldn't possibly _love _me after so short a time," he said instead, not a little longingly, and somehow feeling guilty at the same time. He knew Jasper could pick it all up, but he hoped it was too confusing for his brother to decipher. (It wasn't.) "We'll have our time together, we'll part ways, she'll be sad for a little while, and then she'll get over it and move on. She's strong enough for that."

"What if she is that strong? What are you going to do after that?" Jasper demanded. "Spend the rest of her life watching her from the trees while she falls in love with someone else?"

"I'll worry about that when the time comes."

"You should worry about it now, Edward—any vampire who finds their mate coupling with another generally loses their shit. You'll kill someone, probably right in front of her. And then you'll catch her scent in the heat of the moment and kill _her._"

"I'll never allow myself to lose control," Edward swore. But it was like swearing he would never lose control of a NASA space shuttle when his flight experience was limited to flying small aircraft: he had no way to be sure he could keep such a promise, and there was a high probability of failure.

Naturally, Jasper rolled his eyes at Edward's impassioned declaration. "I've always had a certain amount of respect for Carlisle because he pioneered a new way to survive while suppressing his instincts. But you've confused self-imposed repression with an idea that you don't _have _most of your instincts anymore. There's more to our kind than mere thirst and predation—you're old enough to know that by now."

Edward remained unmoved, even though he knew Jasper was older and spoke from experience. Intellectually he knew all of this was dangerous to Bella. But like many teenagers, Edward was certain that _he _was capable of being the exception to the rule. Instead he said, "I could probably take that seriously if it weren't coming from you."

Frustrated both with Edward's repeated attempts to bait him and with his firm, tenacious grip on what amounted to sheer nonsense, Jasper groaned. "Say you're strong-willed enough to carry out this ridiculous plan. You manage to sustain your relationship, not _feed _on her yourself, and then let her go when her time in Forks is done. She's just supposed to forget everything that happened here? Forget that you're not human?"

Edward tapped the side of his own forehead. "Believe me, you'd be surprised what people can make themselves forget."

"It's official." Jasper shook his head. "You're completely delusional."

"And you're cruel," Edward replied, not looking away from the only window pane without a glare; he could almost make out Bella's hair in the biology classroom. She was sitting in _his _seat, and it pleased him. "You tell yourself you're on a diet because you can't stand the victim's terror, but you kill people and devastate their families when you're too thirsty to wait for the next hunting trip. You lecture me about respecting Bella's space and dignity, but you'd have me extinguish her whole life for selfish purposes, all so your life goes back to the way it was. Kill her or turn her, regardless of what's good for her or the impact it would have on her parents, just so long as _you_ won't have to look over your shoulder. It's all the same to you. You're worse than Rosalie."

"We're already looking over our shoulders," Jasper whispered. "That's the price your family pays for the path you've chosen. When this all collapses around you, the girl will pay for it, too."

Edward would have argued, but Jasper was gone. He went back to listening to human thoughts, adjusting his plans, deciding what to do about Bella's afternoon shopping trip in Port Angeles.

_I can do it,_ he told himself. _Eighteen months of discomfort is an easy trade for eighteen months of happiness. Or something close to it. When she's gone, at least I'll still have my memories._

In her classroom, Bella hummed to herself and stared straight ahead, resisting the urge to turn around and look out the window behind her. And smile. And shoot the finger.

* * *

_A/N: Song title comes from the lyrics to "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues._


	18. My Right Hand Man

_From Twilight Chapter 8 and Midnight Sun Chapter 9: "Port Angeles"_

_Previously: Bella Swan decided to do a little shopping. Edward decided to do a little bird-watching. Get it?_

My Right Hand Man

Bella was kicking herself for getting lost. She almost never got lost in Phoenix, but then, she'd grown up there. She'd been to Port Angeles before for Shabbat service, but only a couple of times, and never to this particular part of town. Wandering around in search of a book store without Jess or Angela seemed like a pretty stupid idea now—she should have just ordered books online like a normal person instead of trying to navigate through what appeared to be a warehouse district. If only Jessica hadn't started spouting off about Lauren and Tyler—just hearing Lauren's _name _got Bella's temper flaring up, to say nothing of the report that she'd tried to start a rumor that Tyler caught the new girl snorting Ajax. Bella was in need of a walk to cool down, got careless, and now here she was, in the middle of nowhere.

Just when she was thinking to herself _serves me right for taking off without a map,_ she realized she wasn't alone. Four intoxicated men slowly surrounded her. But they weren't so slow or uncoordinated that running seemed like it would do much good.

_Great. Just what I needed._

When Bella was fifteen, Lama Gyatso tried to impress upon her that aggressive displays would have negative results. Her response at the time was to reassure him that, while this made perfect sense when dealing with reasonable people who were friendly or even neutral, a person who was already hostile (or worse, power-hungry and inebriated, as was the case with the very worst of Renee's old boyfriends) did not respond to meekness or subservience by behaving in a way that was _less _threatening. His desire was to exercise dominance. The monks, whose beliefs originated from a culture that emphasized acceptance of fate rather than actively changing it, desired to maintain internal and external peace and harmony with the chaotic universe. Bella's desire was to protect herself.

At the present moment, she knew exactly where her pepper spray was: in her pocket. She also knew that with the way the wind was blowing, she was just as likely to get pepper all over her own eyes. Still, waving the bottle around might at least make them think twice.

Sadly, it didn't. The meanest-looking one even laughed as he advanced on her.

_Shit._

Bella managed to knee one guy in the balls and elbow another in the face before they shoved her to the ground, the useless pepper spray rolling across the pavement. And was she scared? HELL YEAH she was scared! But that didn't mean she was helpless.

Not for nothing had Bella enrolled in self-defense classes at the Jewish Community Center as opposed to the YMCA. While all the _goyim_ at the Y were learning specific karate forms that only worked against other specific forms, Bella and Renee were learning _krav maga_. This particular martial art taught defensive _principles,_ adaptable moves instead of fixed stances, and how to use an opponent's weight and motion against him. But most importantly, it specifically taught how to continue fighting from a lying-down position. Bella, knowing she was prone to falling even without being attacked, had found a large partner with whom to practice ground-fighting in her free time. Her father even mailed Bella extra checks for a year to pay for as many lessons as she wanted. So while she knew she was out of practice and wasn't strong enough to give four grown men a world class butt-whuppin', she wasn't by any means going to just lie there and take it, either.

_Buddha forgive me, but I'm gonna kick your ass!_

When a frantic Edward _finally _showed up and saw things from his own perspective rather than the ring-leader's mind, he noticed that a) only one man was actively trying to hurt Bella—the other three were standing back with their jaws dropped; b) Bella could cuss even better than Rosalie, and c) Bella seemed to have executed a rollover. _She_ was now straddling her attacker and beating the living shit out of his face and throat with both of her bony little fists. The other men scattered the moment the Volvo screeched to a halt in front of them, but Edward had to jump out of his car and physically pull Bella off the last man. He almost hated to do it; it was kind of awesome to watch. But this wasn't a video game, a Bruce Lee movie, or a fight on TV with a referee, so he plucked her off the ground, whispering in her ear to calm her even as she continued kicking at her assailant's groin.

"Shit-sucking, cock-nibbling, _ben sharmuta—_"

_"Bella!"_ Edward hissed in her ear. "It's me. I've got you."

She struggled a few seconds more, not hearing him, determined to destroy that evil man by sheer _will._ It wasn't until she felt the cool skin of Edward's fingers on her face that she stilled and inhaled, understanding who was with her.

Lonnie, the asshole with a fresh black eye and bloody nose, shook his head and got to his feet, thinking his buddies had pulled the girl off him. Goddamn it, that upstart little ninja bitch was going to _pay._ But when he looked up and saw two pale, murderous faces, one with fierce, red-rimmed brown eyes and the other with terrifying yellow ones, and no allies in sight, he turned and ran.

"Get in the car," Edward told Bella. "Leave him to me."

"The others," Bella said, looking around now and forming new fists. "Are they coming back?"

Silently swearing, Edward realized that Bella was not going to sit quietly in the car like a good girl while he killed someone—she was going to try and kill right alongside him, and she was probably going to get hurt in the process.

"Let's get out of here," Edward told her, helping her into his Volvo before sliding into the driver's seat. "Let's go," he repeated, hand on the stick shift, trying to make himself fly out of there rather than chase that ugly bastard down. A glance at Bella, who sat with her legs drawn up close to her chest, her body still shaking from the adrenaline, was all he needed to keep him from exacting justice. Bella didn't need an avenger right now—she needed him to be there for her. That meant not being _here, _where he could still hear the disgusting son of a bitch's thoughts.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" he asked, already beginning to point the car in that general direction.

"No," Bella answered softly, unaware of the car's movements or her own. She was trying to process what happened, or at the very least to shove it into a mental box that she could open later.

"Talk to me," Edward quietly ordered after a minute. "Are you injured?" His voice, deep and dark, was enough to snap Bella back to the present. She placed her feet on the floor.

"I'm not hurt." She would have some bruising on her arms and legs from her fall, and probably some more on her knuckles, but at the moment, she couldn't feel a thing.

"Good." He opened his glove box and pulled out a package of anti-bacterial wipes. "Here, clean the blood off your hands and throw the tissue out." He paused, trying not to look as she immediately scrubbed away her assailant's blood like it was poison. "And keep talking."

Opening the window and hastily tossing out the bloody paper (litterbug), Bella asked, "Why?"

"So I won't go back and finish those men."

Bella made another fist, trying to conceal her slight tremor by grinding her knuckles into her other hand. "If you want to go back and run their asses over, you won't get any arguments from me."

This made the corner of Edward's mouth twitch. "I didn't think I would, but it's still not a good idea. Talk about something else."

_Right,_ Bella wanted to say. _Because right now, it's all about you._ "Four dudes just jumped me. I can't _think _about anything else."

"Neither can I," Edward replied menacingly. "But please try."

"Fine," Bella sighed, trying to come up with something. "I'm going to bitch-slap Lauren and Tyler."

Edward started to laugh. _Vicious, aren't you?_ "Why?"

"Tyler told everyone he's taking me to prom," Bella explained. "Everyone except me, apparently. I think that's why Lauren's been acting like such a jerk the last few days."

"Is that why you want to…bitch-slap her, was it?" It wasn't _quite_ the perfect distraction—obviously violence was still in the forefront of both their minds—but Edward found it funny nonetheless.

"Something like that," Bella said evasively. "She's always goading me, and now she's inventing defamatory stories about me. I generally have a hard time resisting the urge to tell her to get bent."

After seeing Bella defend herself, Edward felt justified in saying, "I have no doubt."

"Shit," Bella sighed, remembering where she heard that particular piece of gossip: at the department store with her friends an hour ago. "I was supposed to meet Ange and Jess at the restaurant."

Understanding without having to be told (for a change), Edward turned the car back toward _La Bella Italia._

xXxXx

"So I can ask you any questions I want?" Bella asked after the waitress had gone away, no doubt to swoon like a giddy thirteen-year-old. It might seem like an overreaction on her part, but she worked at the kind of Italian place that decorated its tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths _unironically_. There weren't a whole lot of good-looking rich guys coming in for dinner on a regular basis.

Edward was finding himself 'weirded out' (as they say) by Bella's quick recovery. He assumed she must be in shock—after all, it didn't seem to faze her in the least when he pulled up to the correct eatery without so much as asking for the name, and she managed to pull off a decent façade when she saw Jessica and Angela exiting the restaurant. Even now, she was carrying on a perfectly normal conversation (well, normal for her). He had already asked her several times if she felt herself going into shock. Which was a stupid question, because people don't _know _they're in shock while they're in it—that's kind of the point. If anything, his insistence that she _should _be dazed and zombified by now was just annoying; Bella assured him that she was fine.

It was too good to be true, Edward decided. _Any minute now she's going to start crying._

"You can certainly ask," he clarified, still using a calm voice, "but I reserve the right not to answer." _Any second now. Tears and sobs. I hope she's not a loud crier._

In fact, Bella _was _going to freak out. But not yet. In the recesses of her mind, she found the will to control herself long enough to publicly behave as though nothing had happened. For a while. Once she got home and went to bed, all bets were off. In the meantime…

"What are you doing in Port Angeles?" Bella felt she already knew the answer to this question, but she still wondered what Edward would say.

"Not that," Edward said immediately—he didn't want her to think he was creepy, and there was no way to make the truth not sound creepy. As if she didn't already think this of him anyway. "Ask me something else."

"Seriously?" At his firm expression, she said, "Okay…why do you dress like a Mormon?"

"A…what?" The conversation had barely begun, and already Bella was taking him past the road less traveled and straight into the Twilight Zone.

"Your clothes," Bella said, pausing to sip at her soda. "Nearly every single day since January, you've worn a white Oxford shirt and black slacks to school. You don't even wear jeans. Some Mormon missionary guys used to cruise my neighborhood on their bikes trying to convert people, and they wore that exact same thing you do every day, only with cheap-looking ties." She smiled to herself, remembering how freaked out the two nineteen-year-old boys had been when they knocked on her door to find two Jews who supported gay rights and refused to acknowledge a gentile-depicted Jesus as Lord and/or Savior. "I get that you like button-up shirts, but why are they all _white?_"

"They're not all white," Edward protested. "Some of them are light blue. And why is it that when I tell you 'ask me anything you want,' _that_ is your question?"

Bella shrugged. "What's the point in asking you anything I want if you're not going to answer legitimate questions about the things I actually want to know?"

Edward stopped to consider this. Bella could very well ask him any number of questions that were difficult, if not entirely inappropriate, to answer in public. Had he not chosen a private table specifically so that he could speak a little more freely?

Her innocuous question about his clothing might actually require him to reveal a good deal more than he was prepared to do, unless he was going to lie. How could he explain his wardrobe choices without admitting that Alice chose his clothes, and that it had taken the better part of half a century to make his sister understand that this was how boys were expected to dress at his prep school when he was a young man, and he didn't believe school was the place for making any fashion statement stronger than 'preppy'? By saying "this never goes out of style," wouldn't he be setting himself up to reveal that he'd been wearing the same basic outfit for the last hundred years, and that part of the reason for that was that it made the occasional photograph less dated if he wasn't dressed in whatever the latest trend happened to be? And really, were his clothes even in style at all?

_Am I really so desperate to protect my secret that I'm sitting here trying to justify lying about my clothing, not half an hour after offering to kill a man for this girl? Priorities, Edward!_

"This is how I used to dress at another school, and I got used to it," he finally admitted. "Maybe I _should_ think about a wardrobe adjustment. And you can ask me something harder."

"Good," Bella nodded. Asking him stupid questions seemed make him rethink his silence on the simple ones; would asking more deeply probing questions have the same effect? "How'd you know _exactly_ where I was tonight?"

Edward thought about this, too. He looked at Bella's expression: not curious, but sure. In any other human, he would have dismissed it as the misplaced confidence of someone who has reached the wrong conclusion. But this wasn't just any human. She'd been giving him clues all this time, and only now he'd finally begun to understand.

"Somehow, I think you already know."

Bella smiled in response. "Does this mean you're going to come clean?"

Edward almost insisted that Bella tell him what she already knew so he could confirm only that much and leave it at that. But a swift glance at her swelling hand wrapped around a glass of Coke stayed his tongue. Now was not the time to interrogate her; she'd been through more than enough for one night.

"Yes," he said, quietly pleased at the way this answer made her eyes light up. "But…there are some things we can't discuss in public."

"Agreed," Bella said, focusing on something past Edward's shoulder and frowning at it.

Two seconds later, that damned irritating waitress showed up again. And not with Bella's meal or any breadsticks. "Are you _sure_ I can't get you anything, sir?" _Lobster? My number? My bare breasts in your face?_

Bella, who had spent the previous summer as a short-order cook at a Waffle House in Phoenix, knew better than to get snarky—she didn't particularly want to contract hepatitis from waitstaff-revenge-spit. Instead she sucked on her straw and watched Edward…who, though he could obviously read the waitress's mind, did not pay her the slightest bit of attention.

Well, maybe a little attention. _Negative _attention. His voice was a shade curt when he said, "Another drink for my girlfriend, please?"

Subdued, the waitress slunk off. Edward was too distracted to read her mind, though, by the sight of Bella blushing furiously.

"Did I offend you?" he wondered. He hadn't meant to take such liberties (indeed, his liberty-taking was of a far different kind), but indicating he was out with his girlfriend seemed the simplest way to ensure he would not have to put up with a slew of untimely interruptions from the man-hungry waitress coming over to eye-fuck him every five minutes.

Bella shook her head _no._ Rather than stew (or bask) in the feeling of Edward referring to her, even in jest, as his _girlfriend,_ she said, "Now that Flirty McTightPants is gone, what were you going to say that _can _be discussed here?"

Edward's mouth curved down.

_I drink blood to survive._

_I killed a bunch of people a long time ago._

_I've been stalking you._

_You smell **delicious.**_

_Emmett says the stereo in your truck sucks donkey balls._

"I can read minds." It seemed the easiest thing to start with.

"No kidding," Bella said, obviously unimpressed.

Her reaction bothered Edward. "No, seriously. I can read every mind in this building, apart from yours." Pausing to widen his mental receiver, he said, "That guy by the door we passed on the way in? Pervert."

"If you're going to impress me with your clairvoyant skills," Bella sighed, "pick something I can't already tell by observation. That dude checked out every ass that walked past him." Looking down at the table cloth, she added, "Including yours."

"Don't remind me," Edward groaned. He did _not _enjoy hearing another man think about his 'bodacious, bite-worthy ass.' Casting his mental net for something good, Edward tried, "The manager on duty is behind the building, purchasing marijuana from the dish washer. He knows he's being shorted, but he thinks it's good weed, so he's not saying anything." Listening for a moment, he said, "The dish washer is happy because he not only rolled the joints extra thin, he used terribly inferior product."

"I believe you," Bella said. "But why can't you read _my_ mind?"

Edward shrugged. "I've been wishing I knew the answer to that question for months."

At this, Bella perked up a little. _He's been thinking about me for months? _But out loud, she said, "So your ability. Is that how you knew where to find me?"

"In a way, yes," Edward answered. "I was trying to track you, but you seemed to have gotten yourself turned around, so I had to scan random people's thoughts. My range is limited to shorter distances when it comes to unfamiliar minds." With an apologetic look on his face, he said, "I'm sorry I didn't arrive sooner."

Bella blinked rapidly, jerking her head to the side a little, trying not to remember it. _Not now. Tonight, when I'm alone._ "Tell me something else."

Worried about her twitchiness but feeling it was better to do as she asked, Edward said, "I followed you to Port Angeles. Not to spy or anything. I just wanted to keep you safe. But it seems I'm not particularly good at it."

"I bet you say that to all the girls," Bella teased, not quite managing the playful tone she wanted. She wasn't sure she was in a teasing mood, but she forced herself to try, hoping for a distraction from an unpleasant topic.

"No," Edward said gently, waiting for the waitress to approach, place Bella's drink and food on the table, and leave before he continued. "I've never done this before."

"Day late and a dollar short," Bella sighed, stabbing ravioli with her fork. "Some stalker you are."

Edward's eyes popped; he had to remain silent just to keep his composure.

"I could laugh and play it off like I was kidding you," Bella told him, "or I could sit here and pretend to concoct some stupid 'hypothetical' situation, but…no. I'm calling you out on this one. You weren't just following me this evening, were you?"

Edward could not remember the last time he felt so small. "All day long."

Bella did not look satisfied with this answer.

"But not over the weekend," he assured her, his light eyes hopeful. "I was away with Emmett from Thursday until Sunday night."

"Right," Bella nodded after swallowing more food. "Goat Rocks."

Edward gave her a small smile.

"I wish you had called me to let me know you were okay," Bella chided him gently.

Though touched by her concern, Edward chuckled at the irony. "I spent the entire time away worried about _you._" Nodding at her hands, he asked, "Did you fall at First Beach? Your palms look a little rough."

"This?" Bella looked at her healing palms. She was actually a quick healer—she had to be, or she would never have survived childhood. "This is nothing." Unfortunately, the backs of her hands had finally started to hurt, but she would just have to ice her knuckles later. Looking back at Edward, she said, "What about you? Get caught in any snowdrifts?"

Edward frowned. In fact, he _had _fallen into a deep snow drift more than once. So had Emmett. Part of the reason hunting in the winter was such a challenge was because their dense bodies were too heavy to step directly onto snow without sinking into it. They either had to hunt from the trees or wear snow shoes. And no self-respecting vampire would be caught dead (or undead) hunting with _lacrosse rackets _on his feet.

The real problem here was: "How did _you_ know about that?"

Bella took another bite of her dinner before she answered him. Edward noticed her having a little more trouble holding her fork. "It just so happens," she said, "that I know how to use the internet." When Edward didn't respond, she sipped her soda and went on. "You can find just about anything online. National park websites, weather reports…paranormal research."

Edward sat perfectly still. He didn't even appear to be breathing.

_She knows!_

"More theories?" he finally managed to say.

"Let's cut the crap, shall we?" Bella sighed. This wasn't how she'd rehearsed this conversation—it wasn't gentle or non-judgmental, it wasn't coaxing or coddling. She was not in the mood to treat Edward like a shy kindergartener right now. "I know everything. I know what you are. I know what you eat. I know why your eyes change color, although you may need to explain the bio-chemical process to me later. I know your body feels different than mine because it _is _different than mine. I know that you could have killed those men tonight."

"Then you know it's not safe for you to be with me," Edward said.

"No," Bella corrected him swiftly. "I was almost gang-raped less than an hour ago. That guy would have overpowered me eventually, or his friends would have snapped out of their daze and held me down. You've saved my life twice already. Do _not _tell me I'm not safe with you—it's a damn lie."

"If you genuinely believe that," Edward told her straight, "then you don't know quite as much as you think you do. I am not a cuddly teddy bear. I am not a cat without claws. My feelings for you do not make me less than what I am. Appreciate the danger."

Bella stared at his unflinching eyes for several moments before she looked down at her meal and sighed. "Understood."

"Do you really?" Edward insisted, maybe a little too harshly. "Because tonight you were wandering around by yourself in a city you don't _know._ You _need _to—"

"I said I understand," Bella said sharply. "Although I wonder if _you _do."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Edward demanded.

"Oh come off it," Bella said scornfully. _"You were in my room._ While I _slept, _goddamn you. I was in my house where I should be safe, minding my own damn business, and when I was at my most vulnerable, you just shimmied up the wall and climbed right in. You've been following _me _all day, not the other way around. Now you have the nerve to sit here and lecture me about the risk _I'm _taking by coming around _you_?"

She tried to lift her fork, but this time she found she couldn't. Her hands hurt too much, and the fork clattered on her plate.

Edward was silent for a few seconds, waiting for something—tears, anger, anything. All he could really see, though, was that Bella's hands hurt, and that there was a sadness to her he hadn't seen in a long while. Not since the car accident, when he deliberately hurt her feelings in an attempt to push her away.

"Let me see your hands," Edward whispered. It pleased him that she didn't hesitate, even though he had clearly just warned her that he was potentially harmful to her existence, even though he'd angered her. Pushing that thought aside, he gingerly took her hands in his, first one, then the other, checking for breaks or fractures. When he was satisfied that she had neither, Edward laid her hands on the tabletop and ever so gently covered them with his own.

Bella closed her eyes. "That feels so good," she breathed, sounding relieved.

Edward studied her face, watched as the strain slowly began to melt away. "I thought the coolness might help."

She smiled a little and looked at him again. "I didn't mean _that_, although that's nice, too."

It was a full second before Edward understood. "Oh."

He didn't take his hands away.

xXxXx

"Do you mind if we just sit and talk?" Bella asked as Edward helped her into the car. Not that she needed help, but it was nice, having the door held open for her. Different. "Before we leave, I mean."

Edward smiled. "Sure."

"I feel ridiculous asking you this," she said after he'd climbed into the car and rolled down the windows, "but how old are you?"

"Seventeen," Edward replied automatically.

"No, seriously," Bella tried again. "How old?"

"Don't I look seventeen?"

"Yes, obviously," she concurred, "but how long have you _been _seventeen?"

Reluctantly, Edward answered, "A while."

Sighing, Bella asked, "How long is a while?"

"My birthday was in June."

"Yes, but how many birthdays have you had?"

"Well, I stopped letting my family throw me parties years ago."

"Listen here, smart aleck—"

"Since before you were born." At her delightfully impatient stare, he added, "and probably before your great-grandparents were born. I didn't want to say because I was afraid it would upset you."

Bella reflected on this. Her brain couldn't quite process _that _much time in a living person. "Charlie said my great-great-grandmother on his side was married at nearly sixteen to a twenty-eight-year-old man."

"That did happen in my parents' youth," Edward nodded, "although it was more common on the frontier and among people with…er…limited educational opportunities." Pondering her comment, he remarked, "Is that enough for you to reconcile our age difference?"

"Maybe." It helped that she didn't think of him as her intellectual or emotional superior. If anything, he occasionally seemed younger than she did. "I'm confused about something else, too. You said earlier that you were tracking me, but apparently not through my thoughts. How…?"

"Ah, that," Edward sighed. "This is going to sound really strange, but I can smell you."

Bella failed miserably at hiding her smile. "The same way I can smell blood and body odor?"

"You could say that," Edward grinned. "Though I imagine the same smell is perceived differently to someone with my condition."

_Vampirism is a condition now. Cute. _"So where I smell someone's sweat, you smell what, candy?"

"Something like that," Edward agreed.

"What does…um, never mind," Bella faltered. She had been about to ask him what sex smelled like, but thankfully decided against that impulse. For one thing, you don't ask the guy you're interested in about sex too soon, or he'll think you're a slut. For another, what if he said _that _smelled like candy, too? "So my scent is strong enough to track?"

"Everyone's is," Edward said carefully, so as not to offend her. "I'm just not a particularly efficient tracker, and you seemed to have been going in circles." After a moment, he realized, "That's how you knew I was in your room, wasn't it?" _Bella the Bloodhound…_

"From the moment I woke up. Your smell is very distinctive," Bella confirmed. "You completely freaked me out the first time."

"I'm sorry," Edward said, perfectly sincere. "I won't do that again."

"I know," Bella answered. "I heard you tell me last night."

"You _heard _that?"

"Of course I did," Bella replied. _He's kind of oblivious sometimes._ "One of the reasons it's so hard for me to sleep in Forks is because it's always raining at night, and I'm a light sleeper. So I set up some homemade alarms and glue traps for you."

"You set glue traps…for a vampire." Edward sighed. "Your sense of self-preservation is extremely hit-or-miss, are you aware of that?"

"I wasn't planning on capturing you." Bella rolled her eyes. "I wanted to know when you came in."

"Why?"

Unable to give him a good answer, Bella said, "I just wanted to know."

Edward quietly started his car. After what he thought was an appropriate number of seconds, he asked, "What do I smell like?"

"I'm _never _going to tell you that," Bella swore. Telling him he smelled like the most famous whore in all of Phoenix would have been terribly rude. "Can't you just tell?"

"I know what my family thinks I smell like," Edward explained, "and I can generally tell when I find something of mine that has my scent on it, but after all these years, I've lost perspective."

"Maybe someday I'll tell you," Bella hedged. "But not tonight."

"Does this mean you're not banning me from your life forever for breaking and entering?" Edward wondered.

"No, not as long as you stop doing that without my permission. But while I've caught you in an honest mood," she changed the subject, "would you mind telling me why you care so much about what I'm doing on the day of the dance?"

"What on earth made you think of the _dance?_"

"Only the fact that you were harping on it so hard last week," Bella remembered. "I'm assuming you still care; I just want to know why."

"I should think that was obvious," Edward answered, knitting his eyebrows together.

"It's not."

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

Bella tapped her fingernail on her jeans.

Edward closed his fist around the gear shift. "Because I'd like to be with you."

He didn't just mean for the day, and Bella knew it.

"That's all you had to say," she told him.

"So…" Edward prompted.

"So," Bella answered gently, "I'll be with you."

Edward decided there was nothing more pleasant in the world than the feeling of Bella's hands wrapped around his.

However, he couldn't help but ask, "So what's the Mardi Gras mask for?"

* * *

_*Credit for the line "Buddha forgive me, but I'm gonna kick your ass!" goes to my favorite angsty alien show, Roswell._


	19. In My Eyes, You're Everything

**Super thanks to my loyal readers, especially to those who review and PM me with their thoughts. LOVE!**

* * *

_Previously: Bella kicked some ass. How often does THAT happen in this franchise?_

In My Eyes, You're Everything

"Are you sure you'll be all right?" Edward asked as he pulled up to Bella's house.

Thinking for a few moments, Bella finally said, "I'll be able to keep Charlie fooled, I think. He won't suspect anything as long as I keep my gloves on."

"Don't you want to tell him what happened?" It didn't make sense to Edward that after being assaulted Bella wouldn't seek comfort or security from her father, or at the very least, a police report.

"He's already worried about me," Bella said.

"With good reason," Edward reminded her.

"What's telling him going to accomplish except to get him all worked up?" she shrugged. "He can't even do anything about it, really, because I can only remember one face, and all four of those guys got away."

_Not for long._ "Would you like me to walk you to your door?"

The short walkway from the street to the porch had never looked so long, dark, and threatening. But Bella still shook her head. "I'm good."

_So brave._ "Here's my number if you need anything." Edward handed her a slip of paper. "It doesn't matter what time it is."

"Thanks." Wincing slightly as her gloves compressed her swollen knuckles, Bella tucked the paper scrap into her purse.

"Remember to ice your hands," Edward advised, even though he was sure Bella knew that already.

"I will," she said. "I'll see you in the morning."

She almost leaned over to kiss Edward goodnight before she stopped herself, realizing that she didn't know if he was quite there yet. Edward caught the movement and the sudden stop, of course. What surprised _him _was that he might have let her go through with it. He wanted to let her—it seemed so natural. And that was part of the danger he'd almost allowed himself to forget so quickly.

"Good night, Bella," he whispered, letting her name be his kiss.

"Good night, Edward," she murmured in kind.

Charlie glanced up from his recliner when Bella came inside. "How was it?"

"Oh, fine," Bella answered, sounding tired. "Jess found a cute dress, and Angela bought the most beautiful earrings."

"That's nice." Charlie did exactly what Bella had hoped he would: back off the topic of what Bella did all night when it looked like the conversation might get girly. "Are you okay? You look a little worn out."

"Oh, I'm fine," Bella lied. Realizing Charlie would _never _believe that, she added, "I fell again. Sidewalk."

"Bella," Charlie sighed. "Do you need the clinic?"

"No, no. It's just some bruising. I'm getting a headache, though."

"Did you hit your head?" Charlie sat up quickly, alarmed.

"Not that kind of headache," Bella reassured him, touched by his concern. "If Jess calls, can you tell her I went to bed early?" At Charlie's nod, she went to the kitchen for an ice pack and headed upstairs.

Little did she know, Jessica had _already _called.

Chief Swan wasn't stupid. He knew perfectly well Jessica wouldn't have called on Bella's behalf asking to stay out 'a little later' if Bella was actually _with _Jessica. (Although he had to admire Jessica's attempt at providing an alibi.)

Charlie's problem at the moment was what to _do _with his knowledge. The way he saw it, he could either confront Bella or keep it under his hat for a while and try to find out more information on his own. After the argument he'd had with his ex-wife over the weekend, he doubted very much that Renee would agree to share whatever it was that Bella told her, if Bella had said anything at all. That left him with either asking other people what they'd noticed (a risky option, as Bella was more likely to hear Charlie was asking questions than he was to get answers), or spying on her himself.

_Or,_ his conscience nagged at him, _I could trust her. She's nearly a grown woman. She's been doing just fine without my butting in for the last seventeen years. __At least I know she doesn't have a thing for my K-9 officer. I'm pretty sure she doesn't. Nobody else on the squad has a death wish. Right?_

It took Charlie a long time to fall asleep.

Bella, meanwhile, couldn't sleep at all.

She'd tried crying in the shower, but the tears wouldn't come. She tossed and turned in her bed, rocked back and forth in her rocking chair, and sat on the floor and thumped her head on the side of her mattress. She tried reading books, surfing the internet, music, and meditation. Mostly, all she could see was the face of her attacker. All she could hear was his terrible laugh. And all she could do was sit and relive it over and over again.

Around one in the morning, when she was sure Charlie was snoring his loudest, she snatched up the cordless phone from her nightstand and made a call.

* * *

From the moment Edward dropped Bella off at home, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

However, he'd made a commitment to not murder people anymore, no matter how badly they deserved it. Instead, he went to his father and asked for help. Fortunately Carlisle was all too willing to provide assistance. And drugs. Really strong drugs. (Now that he thought about it, Edward wondered how Carlisle got away with keeping _that much _diazepam on his person. Didn't the hospital pharmacist get suspicious?)

"Not that I'm complaining," Carlisle said casually as the pair ran to Port Angeles, "but I find it interesting that you've become the Neighborhood Watch type all of a sudden."

"Is it wrong that I don't want that _animal _to hurt anyone else?" Edward asked.

"Of course not," Carlisle said kindly. "I'm just a little surprised that you've chosen to get involved at all. You don't normally meddle in this kind of thing."

"I used to," Edward reminded his father.

"That was different."

"Yes. That was using my sense of justice as justification to drink from humans. I'm not taking any part of this man into me. I don't think I could stomach it."

"What I mean is, your position has always been to either feed on these kinds of criminals or to ignore them altogether," Carlisle clarified. "You've never felt the need to involve the authorities." _Opposite extremes versus a middle way._

"That's not true," Edward protested. "But since we have a family policy of keeping out of anything related to the justice system, I have to pretend I don't know anything and go about my day."

"You disagree with the rules we've made, then?" Carlisle ventured. _Silly question. Of course he does. __He's never made a remark like that before, though._

Edward shot a glare at nothing in particular. "Do you have any idea what it's like, hearing the thoughts of all these people _as_ they're being victimized? It's demoralizing. I used to _save _people. Now I can't even call 911 unless it's from a payphone and I don't give my name."

_Why didn't I realize how important this is to him? _Carlisle thought about what the years had been like for his son, and how strenuously he insisted human thoughts were inconsequential—clearly he'd been trying to convince _himself_ of that just to get through the decades. The permanently surly attitude made a _lot _more sense now. How could anyone aspire to retain a moral code or sense of humanity in such a situation, let alone a pleasant demeanor? "How long have you felt this way?"

"Since Prohibition, when I came back to you and Esme."

_So long! _"Why did you not come to me before?"

"Because it wouldn't have changed anything," Edward explained. "There's a logical case for maintaining silence. I don't want police knocking on our door asking for witness statements any more than you do. I have a duty to my family, and I've put that first because that's what we _do_. But we have all these chances to make the world better for the people around us, and we let those opportunities pass us by."

"I think I make a positive impact on humanity," Carlisle commented, trying not to sound hurt.

"Yes, you do," Edward agreed. "But it's just you. I want to make a difference, too."

"Your sisters donate to charity."

"I'd like to think I can do better than just writing a check."

"You can always go back to medical school," Carlisle suggested.

"By the time I'm done with undergrad, med school, and residency, I'll look too young for my public age." Edward shook his head. "I have to work with what I've got, Carlisle. I'd like my contribution to _prevent_ harm. Frankly, I'm tired of justifying my inaction by telling myself it's not my place to interfere with human history."

"Son, I want to support you any way I can," Carlisle said quickly, "but you _know _we can't afford publicity."

"The Volturi do it every few centuries," Edward countered calmly. "They change their names and write themselves into the history books as saviors of man. But can you _imagine _what the world would have been like if we'd prevented the Kennedy assassination? Or the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana?"

Carlisle chose not to comment on all the times Alice made dire predictions for major events in the world around them, especially in the last fifteen years. Occasionally one or two of the family members would say 'We really _should_ do something about that,' but the most anyone ever did, aside from restraining Edward until his urge to feed on the latest homicidal maniac had passed, was to decide it was a good time to move to Canada again. The problem with the Cullens was that the majority of them clung to humanity in theory while looking down their noses at it in practice. They thought of the human condition the way most urban Americans think of wildlife and nature: 'it's quite _awful_ how bad things are getting for them, and we don't mind helping out financially or recycling or whatever, but beyond that it's not really our problem.' If that sounds crass, that's because it _is._

"I'm not trying to become Batman here," Edward sighed. "I'm just sick of sitting on my hands and doing nothing."

"Personally," Carlisle noted, "I'm glad you want to make a contribution at all." When Edward didn't respond, Carlisle thought, _She's good for you. So many changes already._

Edward smiled grimly. "Time to change something right now." Indicating a pub not far from where the two vampires had come to a stop, he said, "In there. He thought of coming here in case he needed an alibi."

"All four of them?"

Edward listened intently. "Just the ring leader."

"Are you going to round up his companions?"

The boy shook his head. "No, the others didn't touch her."

"Very well, then. Which one is he?"

"Last bar stool on the far end, long dirty hair, bruises all over his face."

Carlisle lifted an eyebrow. "Bruises?" _I thought you said you didn't harm him._

"I didn't," Edward murmured, thinking of _her _now. "Bella is many things, but she's not meek."

Observing the worry lines on his son's forehead, Carlisle ordered, "Go. I'll take care of this for you. Watch over her."

"I thought you disapproved of that," Edward said.

"Stand watch _outside_," his father advised. "I don't think she'd mind this once."

So it was that when Bella made her late-night phone call to Edward, he was already in the trees nearby her home, listening to the night creatures chirping below him.

"Edward?"

"Right here, Bella."

"I can't sleep."

_That makes two of us._ Fortunately Edward was sensitive enough not to start cracking jokes. For once. "Want some company?"

"Yes, please," Bella said breathily. "Front porch?"

"I'm already there." Hearing Bella's breath catch, he added, "I was in the neighborhood."

Bella appeared at her door a few minutes later, bundled up in thick socks, a bath robe, and her grandmother's ugly quilt.

"Are you okay?"

Bella nodded _yes…_then shook her head _no._ With clumsy, tired movements, she sat herself down on the edge of porch, feet dangling, letting the wind blow across her face. Edward hesitated, then sat beside her. It helped that he'd just hunted over the weekend, but still, he left a few inches between them. If nothing else, Bella might _need _the space.

So he was more than a little surprised when Bella slowly leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. His every nerve ending lit up, his mind recording the sensation of her warm cheek burning through his shirt. His body was cast into confusion as he tried to patiently wait out her noiseless tears while desperately fighting the competing instincts to do…_something. _Hold her. Kiss her head. Press his mouth to her carotid artery. Tell her he loved her more than anything.

"You know why I love the desert?" she finally said, lifting her weary head and wiping her face.

"Tell me."

"The heat makes the smallest breeze worth more."

Pondering this, Edward said, "I've never been to the desert. I wonder…"

"What?"

"My body is colder in the winter because of the ambient temperature."

"You mean thermodynamics?"

"Yes, exactly. My body doesn't produce its own heat; it simply adjusts to its surroundings. I was just wondering if my skin would feel warm all the time if I lived in the desert."

Bella gave a little surprised snort. "Doesn't sunlight make you burst into flames or something?"

"No," Edward laughed quietly. "Most myths about us are untrue."

"Then why don't you go to school on sunny days?"

"I'll show you sometime," he promised.

She nodded and was silent for several minutes. She found herself grateful that Edward wasn't pressing her to share her thoughts, that he let her reveal things at her own pace. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

Bella swallowed, unsure she wanted the answer but certain that she needed to voice the question. "Would you really have killed them?"

"I wanted to."

"That's not what I asked."

Edward looked at Bella's fingers clutching her quilt. The swelling seemed to have gone down a little, but it still looked painful. His memory had permanently stored her attacker's vision of how she looked lying on the asphalt, and what she would look like in an hour's time. If Edward lived to be a hundred thousand years old, he would never forget that image.

In a voice that left no room for doubt or second-guessing, he said, "Yes."

Bella nodded slowly, processing. "Why didn't you?"

He examined her profile. "You."

Bella glanced up at him sharply. "They hurt me."

"Will you allow me to explain?" At her nod, he continued. "Don't think for a second that justice is unwarranted. But you were my priority. Not ideas about revenge or cosmic balancing. Those are just words_. _Nothing else in the entire world mattered at that moment as much as caring for you."

Bella blinked several times, and then looked back down at her feet. "Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me."

"I wouldn't be here right now if not for you." She sighed. "I just hope no one else gets hurt in my place."

Edward thought very carefully before he spoke. "They won't."

Rather than look up in shock, as he'd been expecting her to, Bella simply grew still. "You went back." It wasn't a question.

"It's taken care of," Edward whispered, "but not the way you're probably thinking. No one is dead."

Confused, Bella asked, "You had them arrested?"

"Not quite," Edward answered. "The one who…he's being delivered to the authorities."

She nodded again, neither obviously pleased nor displeased. "The others?"

"You probably don't want to hear this," Edward said slowly, "but the other three were very drunk and didn't realize what they were getting themselves into at first."

"You're right," Bella agreed. "I _don't _want to hear that."

"I just meant that I don't believe they would try it again."

"Oh, I don't think you're lying about their thoughts. But that's not worth anything. I don't remember any of them trying to stop it from happening in the first place." She stared down at her lap. "There's more than one way to be evil."

"Point taken," Edward said quietly, remembering the first time he had that very notion. A man died that night, and his daughters retained their innocence. This was the thing Edward had never felt comfortable telling his father: it wasn't vampirism that cost the Cullens their souls. He _used_ to believe it did, and he let everyone go on thinking that opinion hadn't changed because he didn't want to talk about his real feelings before now, didn't even want to _think _about it. Instinctive desire to feed on the living wasn't really the issue; Edward realized long ago that appetites could be curbed, but the fact of _having_ them couldn't be helped. The real problem was the neutrality with regards to human life. It wasn't enough to simply abstain from feeding on people. When the suffering of their neighbors inspired neither empathy nor sympathy nor action, when vampires put themselves and their anonymity above their compassion, _that _was the thing that made them soulless. Every single member of his family, Carlisle included, had been guilty of this at one time or another, whether they acknowledged it or not. Edward had been silently sacrificing his soul for his family's benefit and his own since 1931.

Saving Bella (twice now) was a _really _big deal for Edward.

"Can I ask _you _something now?" he whispered.

Bella nodded.

"How would you feel if I _had _taken that man's life tonight?"

Cold wind sighed in the trees as Bella pondered the question. Her two belief systems, of equal importance to her, had always been in conflict on this subject. All life was sacred. An eye for an eye. Neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor. Karma. She could never quite make it all fit.

In the heat of the moment she'd been perfectly sure that she wanted to kill all four of those bastards herself, but that moment was past. She knew what people thought about the gruesome jokes she sometimes told, but they were just that: jokes. Gallows humor was what she used to cultivate a thick skin against the horrors _other _people committed for evil purposes, the evidence of which she would someday process so that the obvious bad guy could be named and justice could be served. But a life being taken horrifically to protect someone else? She wondered if there was a difference, really, between Edward killing on her behalf versus the law performing the task impartially versus a warden dumping convicted rapists and child molesters in a state prison's general population. _Someone_ would have killed her attacker eventually. At least Edward might have gotten a meal out of it. But would she have felt safe around him, knowing he'd just fed on another human being?

"Is it all right if the answer is 'I don't know'?"

"There is no wrong answer," Edward assured her. He felt he knew her just well enough to be sure whatever conclusion she eventually reached would not be unjust.

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" Bella sighed.

"Whatever you wish," was the reply.

"No," she said, wanting to get back to normal, "you don't have to treat me with kid gloves."

Catching on quickly, Edward asked her, "Have you ever actually _worn _kid gloves?"

Bella paused. "Now that I think about it, I don't even know what they really are."

"Gloves made from goat leather," Edward told her. "They were common in America when my mother was alive, but Carlisle says the French used to wear them during the reign of Louis XIV."

"Oh. So when they say 'kid…'"

"They mean baby goat," Edward verified.

Bella thought about this. "Are they softer or something?"

"Softer than cowhide," Edward said. "But I imagine they were fairly strong. The French used to slap each other with them."

"Slap…what?" Bella's eyes seemed so much larger in the dark. "You mean like for a duel? Like in those Bugs Bunny cartoons?"

"Exactly. That's how they challenged each other."

"Grown men," Bella deadpanned, "slapping each other's faces with fancy leather gloves so they could have a prancing swordfight at dawn." She looked away and shook her head. "French."

"Oh, but Facebook drama is so much more masculine," Edward laughed. Leaning in slightly to get a better look at her, he said, "Is that a smile?"

"I'm trying to imagine you in the middle of a Facebook throw-down." Bella looked up into the distance, the corner of her mouth lifting a little. "You would so lose."

"Logic has almost _nothing _to do with a Facebook fight," Edward protested. "The only goal is to be the one who gets the last word. Besides, what exactly is my prize if I _win_? They don't crown me the king of social networks. I don't receive a medal for being able to construct a complete sentence without grammatical errors."

"You get the satisfaction of being right, of course."

"I have that regardless," Edward smirked.

"Confident, aren't we?"

"Experienced. And while we're on the subject…"

"You're out of luck. I deleted my page a year ago."

"That was wise," Edward praised her, even as he wished she would resume using it.

"Well, who could get any work done with all those damn farming games taking up all my time?"

"Indeed," Edward said, neutralizing his face so that Bella wouldn't deduce that one of his false personas had a Frontierville net worth of ten million gold pieces. Or that he frequently increased his inventory by using his siblings' passwords to log on and send himself game items. Yes it was a waste of time, but even one night is a _really _long time when you've read every book you own and you're the only male in your house without a wife.

"You got to my house awfully fast," Bella noted.

"I did." _Here it comes._

"Were you already on the porch when I called?"

"No," he reassured her. "But I was close by."

Bella gave him an odd look. "Was I in danger?"

"Not at all," he promised. "It just felt right, being near you."

"I swear to god, Edward, if you were peeking through my shower window—"

"I didn't," he vowed. "I wouldn't." _I couldn't if I wanted to because of the frosted glass. Great, now I kind of want to._

"Don't think just because you saved my life twice, I'm going to let you have a free peep show," Bella warned.

Edward lifted his hands in the air as though surrendering. "I'm just glad you didn't call the cops on me after my first night here." Slyly, he added, "Not that I'd have been caught, but it would have been embarrassing for both of us none the less."

"Oh, I had a plan."

"Right," Edward snorted. "Mouse traps."

"That was only Phase One."

"Phase _One?_ What was Phase Two, a lobster cage?"

"Never you mind."

"Phase Three was probably something larger, like a tiger pit."

"Personally, I prefer the Edgar Allan Poe approach," Bella said breezily. "I'd trick you into chaining yourself up in a corner of the basement, then hide you behind a wall of bricks."

"For the love of God, Montressor," Edward quoted, making Bella laugh. The sound was more musical to him than any of his favorite concertos.

"So…" Bella said awkwardly, not sure how to broach the subject. "Duck blood?"

_"What?"_ If Edward had been sipping water, he'd have pulled off an Oscar-worthy spit take. Well, maybe not an Oscar, but definitely a People's Choice Award.

"Don't you like it?" Bella asked, confused by Edward's stupefied expression.

"Are you offering me a _drink_?"

"No! When have I had time to go shopping for _that?_ Where would I even keep it?" Bella said. "I was just wondering if that's all you drink."

"It's…no…what made you think of _duck?_" Edward managed to say.

Bella shrugged, deciding it was better not to mention Mr. Carlos by name. "Well, I mentioned Bugs Bunny before, so that got me thinking 'Duck season or wabbit season.'"

"Wabbit—_rab_bit season ends March fifteenth for cottontails," Edward said knowledgably (learning and reciting mundane knowledge always did make him feel better about the chaotic world around him). "So unless Bugs is a European rabbit, after tomorrow he's safe for the rest of the year."

"But you _like _duck and rabbit, don't you?"

Edward's mouth slanted to one side. "Not especially. Small, farm-raised animals are a bit like…Chex Mix, I suppose. The plain kind."

"Seriously?"

He nodded. "We wouldn't even bother with them in the wild, but rural slaughterhouses and butchers tend to have large quantities of them, so it's convenient to purchase the blood sometimes. Generally we prefer hunting big game. Deer and goats will do, but carnivores taste best when we can get them."

"So you only eat animals that are in season?"

"No," Edward shook his head. "We'd get dangerously hungry if we did that. I just try not to feed from anything that's completely banned. Endangered animals, pregnant females, the state bird, that sort of thing."

Not having any knowledge of what animals were protected in Washington, Bella asked, "Like what?"

"Grizzly bears—which annoys my brother to no end. Marmots, lynxes, grey wolves, certain species of caribou." Edward smirked. "Swans."

Bella laughed louder this time. "I should get to bed." Edward extended his hand, and Bella held it to pull herself up. "Thanks for…this. Everything."

He remained sitting, looking up into Bella's face. "Do you want me to stay close by for the night?"

"Just for a little while," she smiled. "Wait twenty minutes, then go home. I should be asleep by then."

"You know," Edward said cautiously, "I think it will be much easier for me to spend time with you safely if I have something of yours to…well, to smell, when you're not around."

"You don't need to explain," Bella assured him, tapping her own nose. She took Edward's hand again to balance herself and appeared to be scratching one leg with her other foot, until—

"Catch!"

"Your _sock?_ Are you _serious?_"

"Do you have any idea how many scent glands are in the human foot?"

"Those are _sweat _glands, and that smell isn't from your sweat, it's from bacteria."

"What did you think I was going to give you, my _bra?_"

Edward couldn't help smiling in answer.

"I don't think so, buddy. Give me back my sock."

"Sorry. You've lost it forever."

"Tell me you aren't going to spend the rest of the night with my sock in your face."

"I'm not. It's the principle of the thing."

"Sock thievery is a principle now?"

"Sock theft has its own online community."

"Sock thieves need a support group and a twelve-step program." Bella stood over Edward, positively beaming, still clasping his hand (the one without the sock). "Good night."

"Good night, Bella."

Edward waited on the porch, listening as she locked her front door and climbed her stairs. If he could have, he still would have undone her terrible evening, but as far as terrible evenings go, this one was salvaged nicely.

Mostly, Edward thought about Bella's expression, her bright, trusting smile. At last, she looked genuinely _happy. _Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure he'd ever seen that look on her face even once.

Except that he had. In Alice's vision.

And while there was a part of him thinking _Shit, there'll be no living with Alice for the next fifty years, _mostly Edward was overjoyed.

Bella, too, felt lighter, and not just because one of her feet was bare. Finally, _finally, _she didn't feel like her life was in a holding pattern until something better came along, she wasn't missing her mom, and she didn't wish she was someplace else— even the cold didn't matter. _Renee was right. I must be in love. This is **amazing.**_

They were both so damn happy, neither of them noticed that Charlie wasn't snoring anymore.

* * *

_A/N: __Leviticus 19:16 "…neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor…" This means you should not stand idly by when a human life is in danger._

_"In my eyes, you're everything," is taken from the lyrics to Rod Stewart's "Maggie May."_


	20. Welcome to Your Life

_**Sorry for the wait. I had a 24 page paper to write for school. No, seriously.**_

_**On with the show!**_

* * *

_Previously: Bella kicked the ass, Edward took the names. And somewhere in all of that, they realized their feelings for each other were mutual._

Welcome to Your Life

Bella groaned when she woke up Tuesday morning. She'd been having the _strangest _dream. Something about annoying waitresses and drunken assholes and race-car-driving nude vampires…

"Damn it," she sighed, looking at her clock. Running late already. For a brief moment she considered just saying 'screw it' and taking the day off. What was the big deal about missing one day? She knew people who'd already missed nearly two _weeks—_

_Edward._

Her fatigue forgotten, Bella hurried into some clothes (_mental note: unpack these suitcases later_), brushed her teeth and hair, and tore into an apple. Charlie was already gone for the day, thank _god. _Locking the door behind her, she was just thinking of her truck's glacial pace when she turned and saw a silver Volvo parked on her curb. A familiar shock of brassy hair waved at her.

_She has a beautiful smile,_ Edward decided. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"

Bella flexed her fingers. They were still sore and bruised, which meant she was going to have to spend her entire day wearing fingerless gloves. Her back was a little achy from being pushed onto the concrete, but the bruising was no worse than if she'd fallen by accident. Considering how things _could _have turned out last night, she wasn't going to utter one syllable of complaint. "I'm good."

"Would you like a ride today?"

"I'd love one," she replied. "Would you like another sock?"

Edward held the passenger door open. His jacket was on the seat—he'd remembered that she didn't have hers. "The sock I stole _is _looking a little lonely."

"So," Bella said the minute Edward slid into the driver's seat, "I've got some questions for you today."

"I would imagine so. Just please, keep in mind that we'll have an audience today."

"Got it," Bella nodded, snuggling into Edward's coat. "So does that mean I should ask you the question about necrophilia now or after school?" Making Edward do a double take was so much fun.

"Why Bella, I had no idea I fulfilled that particular fantasy of yours."

Bella scrunched up her nose. "Nice one."

"Do you have a _real _question?"

"Yes. Why did you break into my house?"

Edward's mouth twisted. "Technically I didn't _break_ in. Your window doesn't have a lock."

"Semantics," Bella frowned. "Why were you trespassing? I need a reason, or I'm not letting you back in the house."

Edward kept his eyes on the road. "The first night I came, it was meant to be as a farewell. I thought it would be best to leave Forks, start over somewhere else, and not stand in your way."

"But you didn't go," Bella pointed out.

"I realized that I couldn't leave you behind." Edward risked a quick look at Bella's face. "And since I decided to stay…I wasn't kidding last night when I said it's helpful to have your scent around me."

Bella looked at him for a moment, then looked away at the passing trees, swallowing the next question in her throat: _why?_ The only way she could keep riding in this car was if she didn't ask that question today. Really, she already knew the answer; she just wasn't ready to discuss it. Not that she knew it, but Edward wasn't, either.

Instead she asked him, "Why did you come back to Forks?"

Edward lifted an eyebrow. "Back? Do you mean when I missed a week in January?"

"Um." Bella considered lying about Jacob's story—the boy made it clear he wasn't supposed to share it with her. But since she expected Edward to be honest with her, it seemed only fair that she do the same. Obviously Edward knew the original story—_he _was in it. Still, no need to get specific about who said what. "Someone at the reservation said your family doesn't go to there. I managed to talk a kid into explaining why, although that person believes it's just a tall tale about a beef with your great-grandfather. The story is you lived here before, a long time ago."

"Not in Forks," Edward clarified with a sigh. Everybody _always _got that part wrong. "We lived near Hoquiam. It's over a hundred miles away, which is nothing nowadays, but back then it was quite a bit of distance."

"You say that like you lived here back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but it can't have been _that _long. There were _cars _four generations ago. Aren't some of the people who knew you back then alive and kicking?"

"Some," Edward nodded, pulling into a parking space. "Most of my graduating class died in World War II or passed away from age-related deaths. All Carlisle's colleagues from back then are dead now, but the children he treated are alive and probably scattered all over the country. That's part of the reason why we didn't settle in Seattle or Portland—we figured most of those people migrated to larger cities to find work."

"What if someone _here_ recognizes you?" Bella asked him, though in the back of her head she was thinking: _did he just say World War **Two**?_

"That was my number one objection to settling here," Edward assured her. "I was overruled because Forks is even smaller than Hoquiam. Carlisle's logic was that nobody moves _to _Forks."

"Except me, apparently," Bella chuckled.

"You've made quite the habit of being the exception to the rule," Edward agreed.

"Not just me, though," she protested. "The Newtons are from California, and Dr. Stein is from Tacoma. There's a Vietnamese family in town, one of the hospital nurses is from Zimbabwe, and there's a whole apartment complex full of Mexican migrant workers and their families. You mean to tell me you've never been to any of _those_ places?"

In fact, he'd lived in California before, and had visited Tacoma _and_ Zimbabwe back when it was Rhodesia, before the nurse was born. "Carlisle should really do more research next time we move," Edward said absently, "rather than make assumptions about this kind of thing."

Bella thought about this, about Edward moving so often and for so long that he was starting to run out of new places to go. It seemed like the kind of life that would be really exciting for about ten or twenty years, but not _forever._ She wondered if he ever felt sad. She also wondered how long he would stay in Forks; she hadn't planned on staying here very long herself.

The pair walked slowly from the car to the school, not caring if they would be late. Bella happened to look off to her left and noticed a shiny red car she'd never seen before.

"What is _that?_"

Edward smirked. "Rosalie's punishment."

"Her punishment is a brand new car?" Confused, Bella stared at the strangely-shaped vehicle. "What did she _do? _I'm pretty well-behaved, and all I got was a rusty old truck."

"She had an _ostentatious_ M3," Edward explained. At Bella's quizzical expression, he added, "A really expensive sports car with a lot of customized aftermarket upgrades. One day she got upset with me and wrecked _my_ hundred-and-eighty-thousand dollar special occasion car. Her punishment is a thirty-two-thousand dollar soccer mom hybrid. She hates driving it, but today she had no choice." Carlisle hadn't _given _her a choice—he refused to let her take his Mercedes, and Emmett's Jeep was overdue for an inspection sticker. It was either the hybrid or Esme's minivan with HOTMOM on the license plate.

Eyes bulging, Bella asked, "What happened to her M-whatever?"

"M3. Nobody else in the house wants it because she'd just start making an even bigger fuss, so Carlisle's trying to find a buyer. So far, nobody in Washington seems to want to front that much cash." Edward stopped and held open the door for Bella to pass through. "Something about an economic recession?"

Bella shook her head. "There's something wrong with you people."

"Bella!" Jessica called out. The couple looked up, mutually amused by Jessica Stanley's slightly dropped jaw.

"Hi, Jess," Bella answered.

"Uh…hey. You forgot your jacket in my car." The jacket was held outward, though Jess was mostly staring up at Edward's chin. _Jesus, it's like chin pornography. How did the plain jane get so damn lucky?_

"Thanks." Bella accepted the jacket with a smile.

"Good morning," Edward nodded at the gaping human, attempting to be a gentleman.

Jess managed a wave, then snapped from her foolishness. "Um, hi. Bella, I need to borrow your Spanish notes. Give them to me in first period?" _And fill me in on this hunk of man-flesh!_

"Will do. See you in class."

Edward watched Jessica walk away. "What are you going to tell her?"

Bella considered this as she handed Edward her coat. "I think I'm going to tell her we're having an affair behind your married girlfriend's back."

_"What?"_

"It's more plausible than the truth." She removed Edward's borrowed jacket and placed it on a nearby chair, along with her book bag.

"You can't tell her the truth." Edward automatically held Bella's jacket open for her. "My house will be surrounded by an angry mob with torches and pitchforks!"

She turned around and slid her arms into the waiting sleeves, murmuring her thanks. Nobody had ever helped her into her coat before—it struck her has intimate, the way the movement closed part of the distance between them. "First of all, nobody around here _has _a pitchfork. This is Forks, not 19th century Europe. Second, that wasn't actually the truth I was referring to. I'd never tell anyone about _that._"

"What are you talking about, then? That's the only secret I have that needs to be kept." He lifted his suede coat and shrugged into it himself; from this, Bella gleaned that a woman wasn't supposed to help a man with this kind of thing. She didn't know whether to think of it as sexist or just quaint.

"I meant she won't find it plausible that you and I are dating just because we like each other."

"But we _are_. Why wouldn't that be believable?"

"Because I'm not pretty," Bella answered matter-of-factly.

Edward could certainly hear Jessica _thinking _as much, but as far as he was concerned it was a) untrue, and b) irrelevant. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"More than you might expect."

"I didn't think she was _that _shallow."

"Actually," Bella laughed, "it's probably a little more complicated than that."

"How's that?"

"I'll explain later. Right now I'd better get to class," Bella said, highly amused.

"Right," Edward agreed. "But really, what _are _you going to tell Jessica?"

"You'll find out later, won't you?" She snatched up her books. "Unless you're _not _planning on listening in."

"Of course I am. But is the married girlfriend bit really necessary?"

"No," Bella winked, "but it might be worth saying it just to see the look on her face."

Jessica, it so happened, didn't need or want any Spanish notes. She only wanted to know one thing:

"How in the _world _did you snag Edward Cullen?"

This was less a question than a hiss—partly because Jessica was bewildered, but also because they were in the middle of class and weren't supposed to be talking.

"I told you last night," Bella assured her friend (who was currently re-evaluating her status on the Friend-O-Meter), "we ran into each other and got to talking."

"Yeah, I buy that," Jessica whispered sarcastically. "The Cullens don't talk to _anybody_. They've been here two and a half _years,_ and they've never spoken to anyone but a teacher and never dated anyone but their hot foster siblings. Nothing less than a wealthy, orphaned supermodel would be enough for Edward Freaking Cullen. Then last week he's waving you over to his table so you two can have an _argument,_ and now suddenly he's holding doors open for you and taking you out to dinner? What the _hell?"_

"Is it really so far out of the realm of possibility," Bella said tightly, "that Edward just likes me as a person?"

Jessica, realizing her Friend-O-Meter rating was rapidly sinking, tried to backtrack. "You're a great friend," she said quickly, although she mentally added _in that less-cute-than-me kind of way,_ "but since when has he ever made an attempt to get to _know _anyone, let alone like them as a person?"

"Since right now, I guess."

"Unbelievable," Jessica declared. "If I'd known all it took to get those Cullens to stop acting like superficial jerks was to run into them by accident outside of school, I'd have faked engine trouble in front of their house a year ago."

Bella had an unexpected, defensive urge to say _that's my boyfriend you're talking about, assmuffin. _"Excuse me," she protested instead, "have you _met _Lauren?"

"That's different," Jessica explained. "She may be a bitch, but she's _our _bitch. She at least makes the effort to talk to us. Do you realize that today is the very first time Edward has ever said anything to me that even resembled 'hello'?" Jessica probably would have been a lot less charitable if she'd known that Lauren was the one who uploaded that embarrassing YouTube video of Jessica falling on her face at last year's church picnic.

"I still wouldn't call the Cullens superficial," Bella insisted. "More like…closed off. Take that little remark about dating only each other—would you want to invite people into your home if you knew the whole school was talking shit about you like that?"

"No," Jessica admitted. "But they don't even attempt to socialize. Not even the mother! The only one in that whole family who ever talks to anyone is Dr. Cullen. I think most people would have been a lot more accepting of them from the beginning if they'd at least tried to meet us halfway. It's hard to keep holding out a hand to someone when it feels like they're looking down on you, you know?"

"That's true," Bella agreed. "I guess I'm hoping things with Edward will take a different path."

"Good luck with that," Jessica sighed, part of her worrying for her friend. Any girl in their school, probably even the lesbian, would give her right tit for a night with Edward Cullen, but Bella obviously had loftier expectations than meaningless sex. Jessica may not have been the most selfless person in the world, but that didn't mean she wanted the girl who stuck up for her when Mike was being a dick to wind up getting hurt when the local spoiled rich boy decided he'd had his fill. Mike was a dick on occasion; Edward was a dick all the time and, much like Jessica's asshole father, he would eventually revert back to default dickheadedness when the novelty of being nice to someone wore off. She was sure of it.

Bella, for her part, just hoped Edward was paying attention.

In fact, he was paying so much attention to Bella's class that he didn't notice his English teacher coming up behind him to smack him upside the back of his head for daydreaming in class until it was too late. If he'd been more present, he'd have moved his head forward in time with the instructor's movement. Edward's head didn't budge, though, and Mr. Berty was making little 'Ow, ow, ow!' sounds and flapping his hand back and forth. He wouldn't realize it for a full twenty-four hours, but John Berty actually gave himself a hairline fracture in two of his metacarpals, resulting in a $75 trip to the Urgent Care clinic, where Dr. Cullen would be on rotation and would ask "What did you hit your hand on, a boulder?" All because Edward was so damn hard-headed.

"Emmett." Edward approached his brother casually between classes, but since he so rarely had casual chats at school, Emmett wasn't fooled in the slightest.

"What did she do to blow your mind _this _time?" Emmett asked. He actually didn't mind talking things over with Edward—he was a big believer in open communication—but he was glad Rosalie was in a different part of campus. She'd have been only too happy to turn whatever Edward was about to say into grounds for a hissy fit.

"Are we…" Edward hesitated, trying to phrase his answer carefully. Talking in code was a requirement in public, but unless they could get away with speaking Irish Gaelic or Italian, it wasn't always a practical way to get meaning across. "Are we bad citizens?"

Emmett rolled his eyes. _I've killed seven people. They don't hand out the Nobel Peace Prize for that. Well, not unless you're Henry Kissinger, but I'd have to kill a **lot **more people._

"No," Edward sighed. "I mean our public personas. I know people _think _we're haughty and snobbish, but do you feel like maybe we've taken it a little too far?" Had he _really _never said hello to Jessica in two and a half years? Hadn't he thanked her once at Newton's store, when she held a door open for him as he was carrying an armload of shopping bags for Esme?

"We're not putting on airs for the sake of stroking our egos," Emmett reminded his brother. "I don't _like _being a pretentious asshole. It's not who I am. The whole antisocial thing serves a purpose. Getting close isn't good for us _or _them."

"Then what's the point of using good manners in class?" Edward asked (though mostly it was a self-directed question). He didn't mind being thought of as clannish. He _did _mind the assumption that his mother didn't raise him right. Or that he would use a girl until he was bored with her. Or that he always was and always would be a penishead.

Emmett rolled his eyes exactly the way his wife often did. "The point is to not attract attention by being problem children. We stand out enough as it is. Why are you acting like you suddenly don't understand the rules?"

"Because they don't make sense to me anymore," Edward murmured. Was he going to be an aloof, condescending asshole, or was he going to be the gentleman Elizabeth Masen raised him to be, the good man Bella reminded him he could be?

"They used to…" Emmett trailed off. _Until you decided to blow your cover._

Edward's eyes widened. "Who knows?"

_We all know. Rose is pissed._

"She's always pissed," Edward said with a roll of _his_ eyes.

"She's got her reasons, buddy," Emmett countered. "I mean, shit…" _We all knew this was coming eventually, but we shouldn't have heard about it from Alice._

"How did _Alice _know?" Edward demanded.

_She was watching last night. Between the dramatic rescue in Port Angeles, you appearing at Bella's doorstep two seconds after she called you, and you running your mouth this morning about **keeping your secret**, the future went nuclear on her. She figured Bella must be in the know. I can't believe you, Edward. You can tell a girl you're a vampire, but you can't be a man and tell your own family something this important?_

"I didn't tell Bella anything," Edward whispered. "She deduced it on her own."

Emmett frowned. _That's not good._

"Tell me about it," Edward groaned. "Jasper and Alice predicted that one perfectly. They'll _never _let me live it down."

_Yeah,_ Emmett thought sarcastically. _The eyes of Texas are on us now that you've deigned to speak to someone outside of family, there's a human who was able to guess what we are and also lives with a **cop,** but our brother and sis doing the Told-You-So dance is your biggest problem._

Edward wandered off, thinking about his family. In the fifties, they'd all participated in various academic, art, or performing art clubs, because in those days teachers worried about a family of foster children who looked like they weren't trying to blend in or socialize, and nobody wanted a visit from a state social worker. By the nineties, school administrators had stopped caring as long as there weren't gang fights, and a family of goody-two-shoes teenagers attracted attention from a generation of lazy bums, miscreants, and sluts. It became more convenient to fade into the background in public school settings and pursue their interests independently, until gradually they were only showing up at school because it was required by law, not to try new activities and certainly not to be social. Edward worried that in a new world of excessive reality shows, YouTube vloggers, and social media designed to encourage attention whores, his family's social detachment was actually making them stand out even more than they already did. Clearly it made an impact on Jessica Stanley—she was fascinated by him, even though she didn't think highly of him at all.

Fortunately, Bella didn't introduce the topic when she met Edward for lunch. She was wildly curious, but she understood why it might be embarrassing, and heaven knew she'd embarrassed him plenty already. And he _did _buy her meal, again. So when he didn't bring up the conversation with Jessica, she graciously avoided the subject and politely asked him another question that had been on her mind.

"Where does your scent come from?"

"Ex…cuse me?"

"You're dead, aren't you?" Bella asked bluntly.

"Technically." _She doesn't mince words, does she?_ "But I'm not decomposing."

"Any microscopic life on your skin or inside your body?"

"No!" Edward almost looked offended for a moment.

"Your skin feels distinctly non-porous, too, am I right?"

"You are, to an extent." Edward hid his smile, enjoying watching Bella's mind work out her new puzzle.

"Then I don't understand how you have _any _scent, let alone such a strong one," Bella said, staring at Edward's forehead. "You don't seem to sweat, you're not releasing skin oils from your sebaceous glands, and even if you were, you don't have any bacteria to break down the lipids into fatty acids and produce body odor. So where does your scent come from?"

"Erm…" Edward muttered, wishing she would lower her voice. Bella's volume wasn't so loud that other humans could hear. He was just a little embarrassed because Emmett was laughing at him from two tables down and three over. "Some of it comes from my hair."

Bella's eyes moved up to the wilderness atop Edward's head. "Okay, I can see the case for that; obviously you've still got hair follicles, and whatever causes your scent could easily be released from there. Does your hair grow?"

"No." Alice would _definitely_ take advantage of hair growth if she could. "It's dead."

"Does it fall out?"

"I can't even pull it out. Believe me, I've tried." _Especially since I met you._

After a few more seconds of appraisal, Bella said, "Can I touch it?"

"Maybe not here," Edward dodged. They were, after all, in the middle of the cafeteria. And you're not supposed to touch hair when you're touching food, even undead hair.

Bella nodded, still thinking. "You've got split ends," she said absently.

That was when Alice started choking back laughter.

"I'm not producing or secreting oil," Edward explained quickly. "We produce something else."

"Oh?" Fascinated, Bella urged Edward to continue.

"I don't wish to frighten you," he whispered carefully, "but we refer to it as venom. It's an acidic compound that has, among other properties, a scent that's unique to each individual. I've hypothesized that it _can _be secreted from hair follicles in microscopic amounts, but mostly it's found in our mouths and tissues."

"Is it in your veins?" Bella asked, excited now. A _completely _new biological system was the kind of thing that excites the right kind of nerd.

"It replaced all my bodily fluids."

"Even the fluid inside your _eyeballs_?"

"Even the fluid in my _synapses. _Or at least I think so. I can't exactly check."

"Wow," Bella gaped. "So does that mean your heart pumps it through your circulatory system?"

"No, it's not like that," Edward sighed. He _wished _his heart still beat—it would make passing required physicals that much easier. "When I have a…drink…it and the venom have a chemical reaction. Venom is a strong acid, and blood is a weak base. The neutralization spreads its way through the rest of the liquid in the body, and the byproduct is what gives me energy. It usually takes about two weeks for the process to be complete, depending on how much I consume or whether anything else stimulates my venom production, and then I need to feed again."

"But how does the blood get from your digestive tract to the rest of your body," Bella demanded, "if your organs aren't porous anymore? Or is it just your skin that's non-porous? Aren't there like five or ten _quarts_ of blood in a wild animal? Wouldn't your tissue have to retain a spongy quality to soak it all up? How does your body dispose of the excess liquid—obviously you're not walking around bloated, so I'm assuming the neutralized fluid has to have some way to exit. Do you pee it out, or does it evaporate somehow? How can you be producing and consuming so much energy but not produce any body heat? When you breathe in oxygen, what kind of gas do you breathe back out? How can you feel so rock solid on the outside but still be pliable enough to have motion? And how do you even _know _what happens inside your body? Can you even get through that skin with a scalpel to study a cadaver?" After a moment's consideration (and taking a much-needed breath), she added, "How do you even know when you're dead-dead, and not undead, if you don't have a pulse?"

Edward rested his jaw on his palm and shook his head from side to side. "At some point, we run out of verifiable evidence about how our bodies work internally, and we just hit the imaginary 'I Believe' button."

"That's hardly scientific," Bella frowned. She knew science hadn't explained _all _of nature yet, but this was too much of a stretch. Neither science nor religion could make sense of this. Maybe if Mother Nature was out of the room and God was high on mushrooms and some lesser being snuck in armed with only the most rudimentary understanding of biology, biochemistry, _or _physics…

"If you're looking for scientific evidence to support my existence," Edward sighed happily, "I'd say either this relationship is doomed to failure or destined for unparalleled success."

"No pressure or anything," Bella replied, flippant but cheerful. "You know, I think this may be the most psychedelic conversation I've had since I moved here."

Edward smirked. "And here I thought you were all about the locals having untapped intellectual potential."

"There's brain power, and then there's subject matter."

"Speaking of which," Edward sighed, "we should talk about something else."

"I'm sorry," Bella said quickly. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"Not me," Edward replied, jerking his head to one side. "My sister's about two seconds away from marching over here and punching me square in the face."

Bella looked toward the Cullen table automatically. All but one of Edward's siblings studiously looked somewhere else.

"Ah," Bella said, quickly turning away from Rosalie's hateful glare. "The _shiksa_ goddess. Figures."

"The _what?_" Edward laughed.

"It's what my grandfather used to call a beautiful woman with blonde hair and big tits," Bella said (at a normal speaking volume).

Now pretty much everyone at the Cullen table was laughing. Even Rosalie smiled (she believed her tits were two of her greatest assets, the other two being her…assets).

"Does she have a problem with me?" Bella asked. She spoke casually, not wanting to sound frightened and weak but not wanting to oversell it with false bravado that any fool could see through.

"Not really," Edward shrugged, going along with Bella's blasé air. This was not the best idea for several reasons. First, 'not really' isn't nearly the same as 'no, absolutely not,' and second, Bella was perfectly aware that while Rosalie looked like an overly-primped delicate female, she was every bit the predator Edward was. Except that _she _wasn't relying on love to keep her blood thirst in check. Bella wasn't entirely sure Rosalie bothered tempering her thirst at all.

"Her issue—everyone's, actually—is with me," Edward continued. "They don't understand why I can't leave you alone."

This earned him a few scoffs from the family table. "Son of a bitch," Emmett complained. "Now he's misrepresenting us."

"No, he's not," Alice disagreed. "You _do _have a problem with him, and you _don't _understand why he can't leave her alone."

"Yes I _can,_" Emmett argued.

"I'm pretty sure most of us understand it better than _he _does," Jasper chimed in. "It's his expectations I don't understand."

"Love is stupid and it makes you do things that don't make sense, especially in the beginning," Alice explained. "You can't expect him to be reasonable at this stage."

"I get the 'stupid' part," Emmett said. "What I don't get is why he thinks being all cloak-and-dagger about it is the mature response."

"Cut him some slack," Alice told the family. "This is the first time he's ever been even a little bit honest with a woman."

"No it's not," Emmett snitted. "He was plenty honest with Tanya when he called her a—"

"Okay," Alice interrupted, "so this is the first time he's ever wanted to impress a girl and be honest at the same time."

"Why didn't he tell _Carlisle?_" Rose quietly exploded. "He ropes Carlisle into drugging and kidnapping a wanted felon, but he doesn't say 'Hey, by the way, my human knows our secret.' What kind of bullshit is that?"

"We don't know he didn't tell Carlisle," Emmett speculated. "It takes a long time to run all the way to Oregon and back, even when you're _not _lugging a body, and he probably stopped to snag a bite to eat while he was out. Maybe Edward _did _tell Carlisle and we just haven't heard about it."

"No way." Rose folder her arms defiantly. "News like _that_? Carlisle would have called us, or at least called Esme. Edward kept it under his hat, I guarantee it. Selfish, sniveling little shit!"

"He's just a boy," Jasper said, trying to comfort his sister with words before he had to use his gift on her in public, which she _hated._ "Remember, no one has actually taught him how to be a man, and clearly he hasn't learned by example."

"Well he's hardly the only member of our family ever to behave like a child," Alice defended her brother. "Or have you all forgotten the reason we rode here in Rosalie's Nissan Leaf instead of an M3?"

"Adults have car accidents all the time," Rosalie said uncomfortably.

"Oh, that's rich," Alice snorted indelicately. "You expect me to believe you had too many wine coolers?"

"Why doesn't anyone believe me?" Rosalie whined. "It was a deer. It stepped out into the road. I was going too fast to swerve out of the way. Even if I had_,_ I still would have wrecked the car trying to make a correction beyond the vehicle's limitations. Not even Edward can hear the mind of a deer right before it's about to cross the highway."

"Which is why all the other cars have deer whistles attached," Alice reminded her. "Except for the one car Edward never uses for joyriding on unlit back roads in the middle of nowhere."

Emmett placed an arm around his wife. "It's not that I don't believe it's possible," he told her cautiously. "It's that I have trouble understanding why it happened to you in Edward's favorite car rather than your own."

"I told you," she grumbled, "I wanted to feel fancy."

"And your BMW wasn't fancy enough?" Alice said blandly. "We had just waxed it the day before. You even made me buy the Carnauba Wax."

Edward paused in his conversation (Bella, who had accrued twenty-two volunteer hours at a Phoenix soup kitchen, was chastising him for wasting perfectly good people food all the time). He laughed silently to himself at Rosalie, though it was traitorous to do so. A man who owns a 'special occasion car' hardly has room to laugh at a woman who wants to borrow one; they both liked 'feeling fancy' now and again.

"For whose benefit are you playing innocent?" Jasper asked his sister mirthfully. "You totaled an _Aston Martin_. It is now a pile of parts beyond repair, taking up space in the garage. Nobody at this table believes it was an accident. Edward certainly knows it was intentional. Why do you always forget that we can all see through you when you trot out the innocent act?"

"I think we're all missing the central point here," Rosalie insisted, trying to change the subject. "Edward's talking vampire anatomy in public with a human. Why am I the only one who finds that disturbing?"

"I told you it would happen eventually," Alice said lightly. "You should be happy. Now he _has _to turn her. He's not stupid enough to leave her human when she knows so much."

"It's fair to say," Jasper corrected her, "that Edward's stupidity knows no bounds. Just _yesterday _he was going on about keeping Bella in the dark while dating her so she can have a normal future. Maybe he can finally have some forward movement, now that he's manned up and told her the truth."

"He didn't tell her," Emmett said quietly. "He said she already knew."

The absolute silence at the Cullen table belied the collective roar sounding off in Edward's mind. Bella had no idea, other than the vague sensation that someone had just walked over her grave.

"We should get to class," Edward suggested, rising from his seat and collecting Bella's lunch tray. He spared a glance at his thunderstruck family. "Why don't you wait for me at the door? I'll just be a minute."

Bella did as he asked, allowing Edward to dispose of her tray as his family converged on him.

"What in the _hell—?" _Rosalie spat, the first one to get any words out at all.

"She's fine, by the way," Edward cut her off before she could say anything further about the importance of secrecy. "Very minor injuries."

"Excuse me?"

"Bella," Edward said slowly. "She was almost sexually assaulted last night, remember? That's why Carlisle's out of town: so that it doesn't happen to anyone else. That's why I spent all last night watching her house instead of calling another one of our famously productive and civilized family meetings." He looked at his sister, the rape victim, at his brother, the man who had been so concerned for Bella's 'welfare and dignity' last week, at his other sister who believed she would be Bella's 'BFF,' and at his other brother, the one who claimed he didn't like pretending to be an asshole. "Your take on that situation was illuminating. I like the part about how taking care of her instead of informing you _immediately _that she knows about vampires—which she knew all weekend and _still_ didn't repeat to her father, by the way—makes me both selfish and less of a man. Your concerns about our cars were all fascinating, too. Oh, and I love how it's so important whether or not I'm the one who shared our secret with the girl you already thought was suspicious—more important than her actual survival, even. Especially when I consider that at least half of you believe Bella's my mate. Your skills at prioritizing make me so proud to be part of this family."

Edward's family remained clustered together, watching with mixed emotions as their brother rejoined Bella at the door to escort her to biology. For his part, Edward wondered if it would really be such a terrible thing to start living alone.


	21. Under Pressure

_Previously: Monday night featured Bella's Port Angeles adventure and Edward's visit afterward. Tuesday morning Edward started coming clean about damn near everything. So everything's supposed to be easier now, right? Also: Charlie's not stupid._

Under Pressure

_Edward,_ a familiar tenor rang in his mind.

Biology class had been a singular experience today, the way Bella's body hummed in the darkened room, and how she seemed to understand that, just once, it was better _not _to hold hands, but to explore the sensation that could come from simple proximity. The whole experience thrilled both the romantic and the scientist in each of them. Birds and bees navigated their migratory patterns not through sight, but through an innate sense of the earth's magnetic poles. Edward wondered if his attraction—not his love, which was something that grew with every conversation, but _attraction—_could be explained the same way. Bella must have been his magnetic north, because he couldn't keep his thoughts away from her, certainly once not the next class started.

Spanish class for him. Gym class for Bella. His favorite time of day. Until this little interruption.

Mr. Old-Fashioned Gentleman sighed and turned his mental radar away from the girl's locker room. It was a habit he needed to change anyway, since he knew Bella wouldn't approve. Besides, she'd gone into the restroom to dress out today, _damn it_. Perhaps it was wiser of her to do so—Edward didn't know how he'd react if he saw day-old bruises on her back.

_Come outside,_ the voice insisted._ I need to speak with you._

Edward whispered a quick explanation to Emmett who, other than a deliberate twitch of his thumb, gave no indication he heard anything. Polite as ever, Edward excused himself from Mrs. Goff's Spanish lesson (the woman had an atrocious accent, but she had a great love for the language and a kind heart). Emmett's eyes followed Edward out the door, wondering if he would need to go outside, too.

"Yes?" Edward said when he reached the windowless side of the building, more than a little annoyed. There was no reason to summon him from class unless an actual response was required.

"I owe you an apology," Jasper said, standing up straight. He wasn't expecting a response—he just wanted to be a man about this.

Edward's eyebrows lifted in astonishment (both of them, even).

"Not just about what happened at lunch," Jasper continued. "Alice and I had a discussion afterward. I've been hard on you about your relationship with the girl because I've been under the misapprehension that you take all the action and she simply reacts. It was a foolish thing to assume, given how tenacious she is in conversation, but it's what I thought because…"

"Because she's just a human," Edward plucked from his brother's mind, "and I'm—"

"Elevated," Jasper finished, trying to be diplomatic. "Understand, I don't think poorly of her compared to other humans, or even compared to you. This is a complicated situation, and I thought pressuring you to take control would simplify it."

"But you no longer feel that way?" Edward surmised.

"Not if the Swan girl—Bella," he corrected himself, "was able to ascertain what we are without being told. Alice thinks Bella is the relentless type, or that she's possibly seen a vampire before. Personally, I'm wondering if we're not _all _at fault for being incautious." Jasper sighed to himself, unable to help worrying. "Are you sure no one else suspects us?"

"You mean besides the elders of the Quileute tribe who don't trust Carlisle to provide medical care? Or whichever of their young take the old stories seriously?" Edward reminded his brother. "No, not that I've noticed."

Jasper hissed softly. _Damn Carlisle for bringing us here. Why did he do it? Why?_

"This is sounding less and less like an apology," Edward grumbled, "and more like a round of The Blame Game. I have to get back to class."

"I'm sorry," Jasper said quickly, and meant it. "I'm sorry I've been an ass with you, especially today. I may not agree with how you've gone about things, but I suppose you've done the best you can under the circumstances. She seems to be handling this very well and with the utmost discretion, so I'm willing to give your way a chance."

"I appreciate that," Edward nodded, turning to leave.

"So when are you going to do it?" Jasper asked.

Edward halted. "Excuse me?"

"Turn her, of course. Isn't that the point of giving her all the details about our bodies? So she knows what she's getting into?" Jasper tilted his head, soaking in his brother's sudden state of dread, conflict, even anger. It was a direct contrast to the elation of Edward's aura earlier in the day, when he was with the girl. Jasper understood why Edward wouldn't want unpleasant reminders at a time like this, in the courting phase. "I'm sure Carlisle wouldn't mind taking the reins, if her flavor is too overpowering for you. After four creations without a single accidental death, I'd say he qualifies as an old pro at it. He didn't even need preparation time with Emmett." _Maria was never **that** good._

"Carlisle swore he'd never turn another person," Edward reminded Jasper.

"I'm sure he did, right after Rosalie cursed him for changing her. And yet: Emmett. Carlisle is prone to justification when it comes to pairing off, so I'm certain he'll make an exception for you."

Edward took too long trying to formulate a response to this.

"You _are _going to turn her, aren't you?" Jasper said, though he meant it as a rhetorical question. "It's the law."

"The law is not specific as to when that needs to take place," Edward said carefully, attempting to control his temper.

"Are you suggesting there's a grace period?" Jasper asked, finding himself tempted to _laugh_, of all things, even though there was nothing funny about this. "I'm sure Carlisle can tell you from personal experience: there's not. At least not in Europe. Besides, Alice has seen it happening fairly soon."

"How soon?" Edward wondered. 'Soon' had different meanings to different vampires. Even in Europe.

"She said Bella looks the same age she is now."

"Then Alice must not want to live in Forks much longer." Edward said brusquely. "If she thinks we can turn the police chief's underage daughter and not have immediate, highly public consequences to deal with, she needs her vision checked."

"Touché." Jasper eyed Edward's features, wondering why the boy bothered trying to conceal his rebellious emotions with a calm face. "But it has to happen eventually."

_Edward,_ Emmett's voice boomed in his head. _Mrs. Goff is about to send someone to look for you, and I don't think she wants to send me._

"My absence has been noticed," Edward relayed, giving no other farewell.

_I'm not trying to rain on your parade. I want you to enjoy being in love, if you possibly can,_ Jasper projected at Edward's retreating form. _But you need to tell Carlisle and Esme what's going on yourself, and you need to come to a decision about changing this girl. Bella Swan cannot be the only adult in your relationship._

* * *

"So," Bella asked Edward as they sat in his car outside her house after school, "you call yourselves 'vegetarians'?"

All the way home from school and for the last hour spent sitting in this car, there had been questions and explanations. Some things Edward preferred not to discuss just yet, but for the most part, he only hesitated long enough to push Jasper's admonitions from his mind. "Carlisle does. Because we only feed on animal blood instead of our natural food source."

"But animals aren't vegetables."

"I know."

"I mean, if you play a game of 20 Questions, the second one to get out of the way is 'Animal, Mineral, or Vegetable.'" (The first was 'Person, Place, or Thing.' Or, if you played with Renee, the first question was 'Have You Seen That Whatchamacallit I Lost, I Swear I Just Had It Yesterday.')

"Most of us are getting sick of using that label when we're in conversation with other vampires," Edward admitted. "We have to explain what it means every time we meet someone new, since no actual vegetables are involved. I remember one in particular thought it meant we only fed on people in a vegetative state, with no higher brain function." He was referring to a Czech vampire named Boleslav, who promptly helped himself to a long-term coma patient. Not only did Carlisle have to cover up the cause of death, but Edward had to explain to his increasingly desperate matchmaking sister and mother that he wasn't gay. _And_ he had to arrange and pay for Boleslav's return trip to Prague, since Alice hadn't predicted her failure and refused to take responsibility for it. "After we've explained the concept, most of our kind invariably find the term just as silly and misleading as you do."

"So why do you still use it?"

"When we're having a conversation that humans are likely to overhear, or when a human asks us a direct question about our diet, it's easier to say we're vegetarian than to say we have some obscure food allergy. We're already strange enough without being referred to as the 'weird allergy people.'"

"Okay, so it's a term of convenience. What would you rather be called?"

"Lately a few of us have been toying with the term 'humanitarian.'"

"That makes you sound like an animal rights activist, in context."

"In a way that's exactly what we are, from a certain point of view."

Bella felt a little offended, knowing that some part of Edward saw her as an animal. Her grandfather's parents had been considered animals, and they were extremely lucky to escape genocide in their native Germany. But Edward didn't mean it that way, so she thought it best not to get too sensitive.

"Does your family always think in terms of a collective?" she asked instead. "You say 'we' a lot."

"Not always," Edward smiled. This girl's observations were always keen, but now that she knew the truth, the pressure to keep his secret was off, so he could relax and just enjoy this facet of her personality. "There are lots of different relationship dynamics going on in our family. Parents versus children, male versus female, couples, age differences, college rivalries, politics, football grudges…there's a lot of room for varied opinions, but also plenty of opportunity for allied thinking."

"Oh god," Bella sighed. "It sounds like an episode of Survivor or Big Brother or something."

"Sometimes it feels that way," Edward sighed too. _Especially lately._

"So," Bella wondered, "what kind of cool stuff can your family do besides the occasional hive mind?"

"I can read Sanskrit," Edward deadpanned. "My mother paints landscapes on the heads of pins. Emmett graduated from fiddling school in Montana."

"No, I meant…well, actually, that _is_ pretty cool," Bella decided. "Fiddling school? Really?"

"Oh, he's quite accomplished. But you meant supernatural stuff," Edward finished for her. "You already know I'm fast. And strong. I can also see in the dark."

"That's useful," Bella replied, "if you ever take up cat-burglary or become a ninja. I know you're stealthy."

"I used to think so," Edward smiled, "until your traps."

"Do you turn into bats?"

"Certainly not," Edward assured her. "Other than an occasional hairstyle and wardrobe change, I've looked exactly like this for decades."

"I can't decide if that's exciting," Bella mused, "or boring."

"Definitely boring," Edward confirmed. "I would _love _to get just a little older. Most of us would, if only so we could give up high school. But we're stuck with what we've got. The only way Alice can have long hair is if she gets some donated and sews it into her real hair. But she won't do it, because she says it's unfair to cancer patients."

"Why doesn't she just buy some hair?" Bella suggested. In the back of her head, she remembered a girl in Phoenix who, upon being rudely questioned, retorted, _Bitch, this **is **my hair—I have the receipt._ "There's bound to be a hair salon in Seattle that specializes in hair extensions. They can glue it right in."

Edward blinked several times. Why hadn't Alice ever done this before? It wasn't like hair extensions were limited to the black community—weren't movies constantly starring young and old actresses of every possible ethnicity with hair pieces and extensions? "Do me a favor," he said. "If and when you ever finally talk to her, suggest it to her."

"What's she like?" Bella wondered. Of all the Cullen children, Alice looked like she'd be the most approachable if she wasn't trying so hard to look aloof and clannish. In fact, Edward was the only one who knew that Alice secretly believed her family loyalty held her back from taking an active part in the humanity she craved.

"Energetic," he answered. "Friendly. Nosy. Obsessed with fashion. Tends to space out every once in a while. And she's left-handed."

"I noticed you're right-handed," Bella remarked, "but I don't get why. You said earlier that with the change comes drastically improved motor skills and strength. So why would one hand be weaker than the other? Wouldn't you all be ambidextrous?"

"I think it's a holdover from our humanity," Edward postulated. "Alice _can _do everything right-handed, but she prefers to use her left. She's also left-eye dominant. Quite the little oddball, that one."

"Does she read minds like you?"

"No, she's got her own special quirks."

"Time travel?"

"Fortune telling."

"Seriously?"

"Well, it's _true,_ but we don't always take it seriously."

"Tarot cards and tea leaves?"

"Only when she volunteers at Halloween carnivals. She's a psychic. Mostly visual, but occasionally audio, too. Sometimes she sees major events, sometimes just small stuff."

"Did she see me coming?"

"Not even _close._" Half the time she still couldn't see Bella _going,_ even when she made an effort. "We didn't find out you were moving to Forks until Chief Swan started spreading the news himself."

_Not a consistent psychic,_ Bella thought to herself. _Maybe that's a good thing._

"Her husband is gifted, too," Edward said. "An empath."

"You mean Jasper? They're _married?_" Bella gaped.

Edward smiled. "Is that strange?"

Bella closed her jaw. "I keep forgetting they probably aren't as young as they look."

"I just find it funny that their marriage surprises you more than their abilities."

"Well I already know one creature of the night with superpowers, but I've never met a high school junior with a husband."

"It _is _pretty rare these days, so I'll give you that one. Rosalie and Emmett are married, too."

"But they're all on record as siblings, aren't they? How is that legal?"

"They aren't married in the state of Washington yet…well, no I take that back. They _are, _but that's for an Emmett and Rosalie McCarty who had a ceremony sixty-eight years ago. At present, he's an adopted son and she's a former foster child, both of whom are now eighteen. They'll probably have another wedding in a few years. It will be her fifteenth ceremony that I know of."

Bella made a hilariously confused face. "Is that part of your cover or something?"

"Not really. Weddings are just Rosalie's hobby." This was partially true. Weddings were an extension of Rosalie's real hobby: being the center of attention.

"Do she and Emmett have special abilities, too?"

"Only if you count swearing as a special ability," Edward smirked.

"Can any of you fly?" Bella wondered, thinking of one of her favorite dreams.

"Not without a plane or helicopter," Edward answered. "I still haven't tried hang-gliding."

"Why not?" Bella wondered. He seemed damn near indestructible. Maybe he was too heavy?

"You're supposed to fly in sunny weather, which I tend to avoid," he said lightly. "And I can't fly in cloudy skies."

"Because…" Bella prodded.

"Same reason a human can't," Edward said simply. "Lightning."

"Hmm," Bella murmured, filing that one away.

"What about you?" Edward asked. "Any special skills up your sleeve? Aside from throwing me completely off-kilter?" _And being impervious to mind-reading. And screwing up Alice's psychic radar. Wow, this girl is pretty gifted, actually._

"Mad science, sense of smell, guilt trips…you pretty much know it all by now," Bella assured him. "There's this one other thing I could show you, but not without raiding Charlie's liquor cabinet."

Edward lifted an eyebrow. He was from a bygone era, in which respectable women didn't drink liquor or beer, at least not in public, and wine or champagne were only meant to be consumed when the occasion warranted it. But he was also Irish-American by birth and the adopted son of an Irish Londoner, so alcohol itself wasn't a cultural evil to him. "A bar trick?"

"No," Bella said. "It's this useless thing my grandmother taught me to do. Called it a 'family tradition.' She said if she ever found herself penniless, she could always go back to her old job at the circus."

"Again with the circus jokes," Edward tutted. "Last time Phil was the human canon ball. Is your mother a sword-swallower, too?"

"No, seriously," Bella assured him. "My grandmother spent a year with a traveling circus before she met my grandfather. I'm totally part-carney."

"Glass bottle juggling?" Edward teased.

"Drunken lion taming," Bella replied, winking.

"Really?"

"No."

"Damn, I'd have liked to see that."

"Sorry, the circus life isn't for me."

"Can I ask you a serious question now?"

"Go for it," Bella grinned.

"How can you possibly be comfortable with _any _of this?" Any other human with the sense God gave a _dog _would be suffering from a nervous breakdown at the very least. "Me, my family, what I am, what I eat…how?"

"I wasn't at first," she admitted. "I had some time to think about it, and what it would mean. And I did consider running off to my mom in Florida."

"What changed your mind? Was it…the other night, in Port Angeles?"

"No. My mind was made up by then."

"Something your mother said?"

Bella blushed, making Edward's curiosity flare. "A little. But even before that."

"Please tell me."

"It was Sunday," Bella reflected, looking out the window at her house. "After we took Izzy back to Mark's house."

"I don't follow."

"Mark came home early," Bella explained. "He broke up with his girlfriend, so he wanted his dog back for company. Charlie and I went together, trying to cheer him up, although Charlie was just acting _weird _about it the whole time, like he wanted me to be there but at the same time he didn't." She shook her head, wondering why her father had spent so much of the visit watching her like a hawk every time she and Mark said two words to each other. _Men._ "Anyway, we were only gone for a couple of hours in the morning, and we came home so I could make lunch. My dad opened the door, and I noticed the smell."

"Smell?" Edward repeated, his voice severe.

"Gas."

Edward suppressed an instinctive growl. Funny thing about vampires: they lost many human behaviors, like excessive blinking, but for no apparent reason _whatsoever_ they gained animal ones. It sort of made sense for those rare vampires who, like the Cullens, hunted animals and might pick up that animal behavior over time, but traditional feeders didn't generally spend their time observing animals, so there was no known cause for why they did things like hissing at interlopers and growling like a bunch of feral cats when something pissed them off.

The thought of Bella smelling gas in her house _really_ pissed Edward off.

"Charlie couldn't smell it, because our kitchen is at the other end of the house," Bella continued, "but I could tell right away. We stayed outside and called the utility company, and they dispatched an emergency technician. Turns out there was a crack in the gas connection in back of the stove." She sighed and sagged in her seat. "If I'd gone in there to cook, half the kitchen might have blown up, and me along with it."

Slowly, Edward placed his hand over Bella's. It was so warm. He could feel blood pulsing through the veins threading under her skin. "I'm glad you're safe."

"Me, too," she agreed, finding his cold skin as pleasing as she had the night in Port Angeles. As a direct result of that night, she would find cool skin attractive and comforting for the rest of her natural life.

"How did the crack form?" Edward wondered, forcing himself to concentrate on the conversation. _Cracks don't just happen when no one's home._

Bella shrugged. "I tripped in the kitchen that morning and bumped into the stove. That might have been it." She looked down at Edward's hand. "When the tech told us we had narrowly escaped an explosion, I realized I would have died and never seen my parents again, my old friends in Phoenix, my mother's cousins and their kids, that goofy, long-eared dog…and for some reason all of that felt secondary to the thought that I'd never see _you_ again. I had no idea what it meant, and I still wasn't sure I could trust you, what with your bedroom intruder habit. But I knew I wanted to see you again, and it didn't matter so much that you aren't human. There are worse things than caring about someone who drinks animal blood."

"Thank you," Edward whispered, overwhelmed.

"For what?"

"For feeling that way," he told her, feeling both grateful and guilty—Bella would never feel comfortable if he told her how badly he wanted her blood, and while he knew the responsible thing to do would be to tell her anyway and hope for the best, the selfish bastard in him wanted to enjoy the feeling of her love and care for a little while longer.

He cocked his head to one side, listening to the distinct sound of an old Crown Victoria. "I should go, unless you don't mind your father meeting me."

Bella thought about this. She wasn't minutely ashamed of being with Edward, and she wasn't _exactly _afraid to tell her father she had a boyfriend, if that's what you could call whatever this was. She just wanted to keep it to herself for a little while, a delightful secret to ponder on her own before Charlie did the typical dad thing and pissed on it. "Not today, I think."

"As you wish," Edward nodded. He wondered what Jasper would think about this, if he would call Bella childish for not telling her parent she was seeing someone. But then, Bella wasn't protecting her family secret from an outsider. Edward highly doubted Jasper, or anyone else in his family, would _want _Bella to be equally as candid with her parents as Edward was expected to be with his.

"Can you just wait one minute while I get you something?" Bella requested. At Edward's nod, she dashed into the house. Edward, who wasn't a particularly patient person when he didn't have something else to occupy his attention, sucked in some fresh air and tried not to think about the way his passenger seat smelled—it was the equivalent to a human smelling warm chocolate chip cookies or French fries in their car after the food had been taken away. Maybe it _wasn't _such a stress relief, having Bella in the know; without the constant fear of accidentally revealing his secret, Edward didn't have as much mental exertion to distract him from her scent. He hastily grabbed a blank sheet of paper and a bendy straw from his glove compartment; he'd turned it into a pinwheel by the time Bella returned.

"You changed your shirt?" he noticed.

"I just wanted to give you something," she smiled, "so the sock won't be lonely."

Bella dropped the shirt she'd been wearing into Edward's passenger seat, laughing as he thanked her, asked her to call later, and pulled away.

Edward sped toward home, intent on two things: telling his parents the truth about Bella Swan, and questioning Rosalie and Jasper about the gas leak. Bella's shirt remained tightly gripped in his hand.

In the kitchen, Bella noticed a note on the table that she didn't remember seeing when she left for school in the morning.

_Isabella,_

_I'll bring home pizza for dinner. I'm sure you're much too tired to cook. Please keep your evening free. We have plans tonight._

_Love,_

_Dad_

* * *

Chief Charlie Swan did not tolerate certain things:

He did not tolerate hoodlums.

He did not tolerate sneaking out at night.

He most definitely did not tolerate drugs.

Any boy who was skulking about the neighborhood at two in the morning was most likely a hoodlum. And not only was he sneaking out, the kid got Charlie's own daughter to sneak out, too. Possibly even _to do drugs_.

But Charlie was not quite as reactionary as Bella had always been told (by her even more reactionary mother). Much like Bella, he had the ability to wait and think about what was in front of him. Patrol cops made snap judgments—Charlie was the _Chief._ He could put together seemingly meaningless details if he thought long enough about them. Like the fact that Bella hadn't taken off her gloves when she came inside. Normally those things came off so fast that he'd sometimes pretend to duck, as if she might send them flying at his head. And something bothered him when Bella said she fell. He didn't doubt it was likely, but if she scraped up her palms trying to break her fall, why would she cover them up with gloves? Even before this, Bella had been behaving as though she anticipated a need to act defensively, asking absurd questions and begging for a Taser. She'd certainly gone _out _with Jessica last night, but they didn't come home together. When she arrived, she looked absolutely terrible when she walked in the door. And in spite of telling him she was going to bed early, he knew Bella stayed awake. Clacking away on that keyboard of hers wasn't as silent an activity as she'd hoped.

Charlie wondered who she met, how long they were out there, and if they'd gone anywhere else. He didn't have time to go downstairs and check—he only woke up a minute before she came back inside, and his bedroom was at the back of the house. The only part of their conversation he heard was Bella's laughter. Well, that and her footsteps. She'd come in barefoot, so she probably hadn't gone anywhere. He didn't hear a car engine, either. Perhaps she was with someone who lived in walking distance.

Charlie left for work before Bella woke up for school Tuesday morning. Her sleeping in did not surprise him—she slept so little lately that it was a wonder she didn't collapse from exhaustion in the middle of school. He was very pleased, as he stood on his front porch, not to find ashes, roach clips, bits of drug balloons, or any of the other things he'd long ago learned to search for when drug use was suspected. Or worse: condom wrappers.

_It's the little things that start the day off right,_ he thought wryly.

It was only moments later that he mentally smacked himself for a) suspecting his daughter of teen delinquency when she'd done nothing that was actually wrong, b) thinking condoms were a _bad_ thing in this day and age, and c) believing for one second that Bella was dumb enough to bring drugs to the house when she regularly babysat a drug dog.

On a whim (the kind of instinctive whim that usually resulted in some petty criminal getting caught red-handed) Charlie circled his block before heading to the main thoroughfare out of the aging subdivision. Most of his neighbors had lived in the same houses for at least a generation, though a few had moved in only within the last five years, relocating from somewhere else in town. It was safe to say that, barring the occasional new vehicle someone bought for a son or daughter, Charlie knew every car on his block and at which house each one belonged.

So a silver Volvo parked in front of the vacant Johannsen place stood out.

_485-KJW. Gotcha._

Edward stared after the police cruiser, wondering at the vague sense of satisfaction he could only just make out in Charlie's mind. Not being able to clearly hear the Chief's thoughts would eventually become a problem, Edward decided, but for now there was nothing he could do about it. He waited a few extra minutes until the blurred thought vanished, then started his car and drove to Bella's house.

Chief Swan ran the plate number as soon as he pulled up to the coffee shop to place his regular order. When the Volvo came back as Dr. Cullen's vehicle, one of seven, there he stopped.

_Why,_ Charlie asked himself, _does the Quileute tribal council have it in for the Cullen family?_

He'd certainly wondered about this before, but until now, he'd always carried preconceived opinions about the value of the answer. Surely there was nothing Billy or the other council members could say about it that would make one bit of rational sense. At least, that had always been Charlie's take on it. Even Harry Clearwater made it clear that he didn't support the council's final ruling, though he'd never actually said what that ruling had been based on. No one had. Every time Charlie tried to get an answer, he was told it was none of his business and certainly not within his jurisdiction.

Time to make a decision. It was only a small one, but it didn't come lightly. Any cop could spend his whole day running plates on every vehicle on the road to make sure they were "properly registered," but technically it was illegal for any peace officer, regardless of rank, to use a state or national database to run someone's personal identification without probable cause. The system was monitored nowadays, so he couldn't just sneak a peek under the radar and hope no one noticed. If he wanted to run a background check on someone, he either had to obtain their explicit permission, have a good excuse to make a traffic stop, or use one of those websites that charges $29.95 per background or $100 for a slew of them. Technically, at least two of the Cullen children were minors. That opened up a whole _world_ of impropriety issues and civil rights violations. Even if he didn't get caught and sued, he still had no way to prove whatever was wrong with Bella was even related to the Cullens. Any district attorney worth his county paycheck would tell him that if all he had was a car parked in an empty driveway around the corner, he had nothing to make a case out of, not even a _crime_.

Chief Swan chose not to prematurely take a course of action that could ruin his career. But that didn't stop Charlie from spending his entire day worrying about his daughter. When he went to the elementary school with his poor shmoe rookie dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog, he worried. (He also wondered why the Cullens didn't adopt _young _children rather than all these teenagers.) He even made a point of cruising his neighborhood on the pretense of maintaining visibility. He halfway expected to find Bella's truck still parked in the driveway, so seeing it there wasn't what bothered him. However, a quick check inside revealed she wasn't in the house—he would have understood her staying home to sleep, but she was just gone, as was her backpack. _Slow down, Charlie, _he told himself, even as he hastily scribbled a note asking her to stay home so he could, in essence, interrogate her, _gas prices are sky high—maybe she's carpooling…with a Cullen kid who lives miles out of town?_ A follow-up drive to the high school to schedule an upcoming visit from Izzy the Drug Sniffer revealed that Bella had, in fact, arrived at school, and had not skipped any of her classes so far. She'd never skipped a single class, except for the day she had her fainting spell and went home early. Her grades were good, and no teacher had a single word of complaint against her (except for Bob Banner the biology teacher, but that guy was an asshole). Bella Swan, according to her permanent record, was a Good Girl.

It did bother her dad, though, that she appeared to have packed half of her clothes into suitcases. Maybe she was too unhappy to stay in Forks after all.

It took Charlie most of the day to see the bigger picture. Bella had been worried about something, and perhaps her fears had been realized. But last night she still_ made it home._ What's more, whoever had visited in the middle of the night made her laugh. Whereas before she'd been jumping at little sounds, now she seemed to feel safe enough to go outside after dark. She didn't really even go anywhere that he knew of—she probably stayed on the porch for a little while and came right back inside. She went to school _with _someone rather than alone, for a change. And that evening, when she threw together a salad to go with Charlie's carryout pizza, she even hummed. And not just any old humming, but Marvin Goddamn Gaye.

_Oh hell,_ Charlie sighed to himself, recognizing the chorus to "Let's Get it On." _She's not in trouble, I am. She's in love. I can't believe Renee was right. Oh god, does that mean I have to have a sex talk with my daughter? I'm not ready for that! Is she ready for that? She's seventeen—maybe she's past that. Please, for the love of Jesus, let Renee have already conducted that conversation with her…_

With that in mind, Charlie set the pizzas on the table, leaned against the kitchen counter, and cleared his throat.

"Hi, Dad," Bella called over her shoulder. God, why did she have to sound so _cheerful?_

"It's Tuesday."

"Um," Bella replied. "Happy Tuesday?"

"Aren't you going to ask me if your package has arrived?"

"Package?"

Charlie rolled his eyes. "It's been less than a week. Don't tell me you already forgot."

Bella stood up straight and turned around. She met her father's eyes, but said nothing. Her expression, Charlie decided, was not one of confusion exactly, but it seemed guarded. He'd seen it hundreds of times whenever he pulled someone over who invariably had something to hide, whether it was unpaid speeding tickets or a joint in their pocket.

Slowly, Charlie extracted something from his Forks PD equipment bag. "This arrived at my office for you today."

It looked like a cell phone. A really _cheap _cell phone.

"Wow," Bella managed to say. "Finally."

_She looks a little more disappointed than I was expecting._ He moved closer. "See, the electrodes are here. This is your safety switch, and this is the trigger. I paid a little extra and got you the model that discharges 4.5 _million _volts."

Bella stared at it for a few seconds before reaching over and gingerly plucking the little device from her father's hand.

_Do I still need this?_

Thinking about the look on Rosalie's face in the cafeteria (a look some of her friends back home referred to as "mad doggin'" or "bitch, I'ma kill you"), Bella recalled Edward mentioning an aversion to lightning. And though she hoped to forget it, she'd also been attacked by a human predator just last night, and only narrowly escaped. She couldn't expect Edward to be her twenty-four-hour bodyguard.

Bella decided that maybe she did want to hang on to it. Just in case.

"Thanks," she said quietly, closing her fist around it.

"Of course, you still have to test it out on someone," Charlie reminded her, watching her all the time.

Her eyes widened as she remembered that part of the deal. "Who?"

"My rookie will be waiting at the station after supper."

_"Dad."_ Bella's scandalized voice was almost amusing to Charlie. "That's your idea of father-daughter bonding? Electrocuting an innocent man?"

"We had an agreement, Bella. You aren't going back on it now," he said firmly. "Besides, I happen to know he had to use a Taser on another cadet at the academy. This is part of being a cop."

"But I don't want to hurt a cop," Bella protested. "You _know _I can't live with that kind of guilt."

"The animal shelter is too far away, and I don't have any detainees or arrestees right now," Charlie explained, mentally adding _though I might go find one at a certain doctor's house._ "So unless one of the guys on duty brings in someone who's willing to do anything to get out of an arrest, you're tazing my rookie tonight."

"But Dad—"

"Or maybe you'd rather stay home and talk about what you were doing outside in the middle of the night," Charlie said knowingly.

Bella promptly shut the hell up and went back to tossing salad.

"I want to trust you," Charlie said, dropping his bag on the dryer and sitting down in his usual chair.

"Have I given you reason not to?" Bella asked.

"You've been acting strange lately, and you won't talk to me about it. At the very least, that's cause for concern."

"I've had a lot on my mind and I needed to clear my head. Just because I want privacy and some fresh air doesn't mean you need to worry about me."

"I'm your dad. I don't need a reason to worry about you."

"Mom never got worried when I went outside at night to sit in a lawn chair in our own backyard." Primarily because Renee was too busy making love to notice she'd woken her daughter up again.

"I would have worried about you."

Bella didn't look at her father. "I know." _That's why I love you._

"The truth, Isabella."

She sighed and looked at the wall, wondering what she'd gotten herself into, if the rest of her life would be spent having guarded conversations.

Brought the salad and dinner plates to the table.

Showed Charlie her hands. He would have noticed the greenish bruises anyway once she started eating.

He started to get up, to go to her, but she lifted her hands higher, palms forward. "Don't. Please. I'm fine."

"When," Charlie asked immediately, slowly sitting back down, his eyes roving over his only child, searching for defensive wounds, bruises, anything.

Bella retrieved two forks and sat down. "Yesterday, in Port Angeles."

"Someone you know?"

"No."

"Did he—?"

"I fought him, and someone drove up and scared him away."

_Thank you, Lord. _"Your pepper spray?"

"Useless."

"Where the hell were your friends?"

"Still at the store. I went for a walk and got lost. It was my own stupid fault."

"Damn it…I know you didn't call the cops. They'd have notified me."

"There was no point. I got mugged. It happens."

Muggers grabbed a purse and took off; they didn't stick around to rough you up for the hell of it. Charlie sighed, knowing Bella wasn't the only victimized girl in the world to protect her mind by minimizing the crime. "Why didn't you call me?"

"Because I was okay."

"This is not 'okay.' You're hurt."

"I knew you'd just worry and make a big fuss, and I couldn't deal with it."

"Worry, yes. Fuss, no. Do not confuse me with Renee. You're supposed to tell me when something bad happens, and I'm supposed to _protect_ you."

She shook her head. "You can't protect me from something that's already happened."

"Can you give me a description of him, at least?"

"Please, stop," Bella quavered. She knew where he'd go with this next, and so help her, she could not handle looking at mug shots. "It's over. I'm safe. I know better. Don't make me talk about it anymore."

Charlie looked at her; her eyes had quickly turned puffy and red, clearly on the verge of tears. Her explanation didn't actually explain why she'd been behaving so strangely _before _the Port Angeles trip, but then again, maybe it did. Maybe she just had a more realistic view of life in small-town Washington than he did. "Okay." He hesitated, then served her a slice of pizza. "Just please, in the future—"

"I know, Dad."

"We can talk about your night visitor later."

Bella decided she didn't have the energy to be worried all night about when Charlie was planning to ambush her with invasive questions. Falling in love was nice; keeping a deadly secret from her father was not. She set her salad fork down on the table and stared at her food. "Let's just get it over with so I can finish eating and do my homework."

Charlie knew a dozen ways to ask questions. He considered his favorite: ask her misleading questions about the stuff he _did_ know to see if he'd catch her in a lie, thus tricking her into thinking he knew everything so she'd be honest about what he didn't know. But now was not the time to be a cop. It had been years since Charlie had seen his daughter this close to bawling, and he couldn't say he blamed her.

"Did you go anywhere?"

"No." Where would she even go? There was nothing to do in Forks in the middle of the night.

Charlie rubbed his face with one hand. "Promise me you weren't doing anything illegal or stupid, and that you aren't going to make a habit of late night porch visits, and I'll let it go until you're ready to tell me more. And for god's sake, don't go outside barefoot in freezing weather anymore."

Bella nodded, too surprised to give more of an answer.

"No more arguments about tonight either, young lady. You're practicing with that Taser even if you have to use it on _me._"

At this, Bella cracked a weary smile. "For that, we should charge admission."

"Whole town'd show up," Charlie grinned. "We'd have a nice addition to your college fund."_ Bouncing back. That's my girl._

* * *

"So Alice," Emmett said lazily, constructing a tower of Lincoln Logs to use with his impromptu Rube Goldberg device, "what's Bella up to tonight?"

Emmett didn't actually care what the human was doing—she was an oddity, a cause for upheaval and change in the house. He'd been sufficiently chastised enough to be glad she was okay after her attack, but other than that, there was no real curiosity about her personality, interests, or activities. There was plenty of time for that later, when she joined the family and got over the newborn period, and by then she would develop new interests anyway. He was only asking because Edward was dying to do the same, and he knew Edward felt he couldn't ask without coming off as obsessive. To Emmett, this was like a little gift he could give his brother.

Alice paused her mending (normally she would have thrown the shirt out, but Jasper claimed it was his favorite, and when someone makes the effort to keep the same shirt for forty-one years, you don't just toss it). For a full five seconds, she appeared to be completely engrossed by the wood grain on the floor. "Damned if I know," she finally shrugged, disappointing one brother and inciting curiosity in the other. "I caught a glimpse of dinner with her father, but after that her future went blank again."

"Doesn't that bother you?" Emmett wondered.

"Oh, it makes me grind my _teeth._ But it's better than when her future goes totally batshit."

"In what way is it better?" Edward demanded. "She could be doing anything! She could be dying or getting into trouble—"

"Or cutting her hair!" Alice teased him.

"Or getting high behind the truck stop," Emmett joined in.

"Or dishing out vigilante justice, ninja style," Alice giggled.

"Or masturbating!" Emmett crowed.

"Oh that is _it!_" Edward snarled, just before he launched himself at his enormous, laughing brother, sending Lincoln Logs scattering everywhere.

"So what if she is?" Alice said breezily, returning to her needle and thread. "There's nothing wrong with it. She could probably use the stress relief. At least you can be reasonably sure she's thinking about _you._"

Edward, who was busy trying to get his arms around Emmett's neck, grunted, "It's the middle of the _day._"

"Not to be nitpicky," Alice said, "but the middle of the day was hours ago. What difference does it make what time it is?"

"I think our brother," Emmett puffed, getting a grip on Edward's armpit and using it to twist him upside down, "is concerned that she's doing it while people are awake."

"No," Alice sighed, finishing up her last stitch and biting off the excess thread. "I think it's that she might be doing it at all. _He's_ never done it."

"But everybody does it," Emmett argued, wincing in pain when Edward managed to yank his foot 90 degrees in the wrong direction. "Our boy needs to stop demonizing a perfectly natural thing and just alleviate his tension already."

"You say that like sexual frustration is my only problem," Edward groaned. "She hasn't suddenly stopped smelling delicious." Today…good _god _but she smelled so good today.

"Well it's at least _half _the problem, and you're not doing anything about it." Emmett tried using an old hillbilly wrasslin' move. It failed. "I do it all the time. Sometimes Rosalie and I even—"

"Finish that sentence," Rosalie hissed from the computer station, "and I swear to god, we won't be doing it again." She was already in a bad mood, what with Edward accusing her and Jasper of sabotaging Bella's stove while he was out of town. They both understood why he felt the need to ask, but they were still _offended_ by him asking.

"But you can't argue that we haven't all done it," Alice replied to her sister. "Especially you. This weekend while Emmett and Edward were away, Esme and I heard you from all the way out in the back yard."

"I'd prefer you leave me out of this conversation," Rosalie growled, saving her file before she closed it.

"Oh, don't be as big of a prude as Edward," Alice jibed.

"I can personally attest," Emmett shouted, "that she is definitely _not _a prude."

"You've never been shy, either," Alice recalled, eyeballing her sister. "What gives?"

"I'd rather not be part of a sexual discussion," she answered, standing swiftly, "that includes Edward or his human girlfriend diddling themselves."

"Girls diddle," Emmett corrected her (very loudly). "Guys manhandle."

"I thought they jerked," Alice frowned. "Or is it jacking? There's so much slang for it nowadays."

"Breaking the spitting llama," Emmett volunteered, abruptly releasing Edward's arm and shoving him toward the sofa. He watched his wife's backside sway as she left the room in disgust.

"Wrangling the bucking bronco," Jasper joined in, speeding down the stairs now that he found something to contribute to the conversation.

"Having a one-night-stand with the sperm whale," Alice laughed.

"Tuning the organ!"

"Scalpin' the pud!"

"Burping the leafless palm trunk!"

"Spanking the brass monkey!"

"Unloading wood!"

"Polishing your trophy!"

"Whackin' the love rifle!"

"Boxing with Ol' Faithful!"

"Shaking the coconut milk of love from the sex stick."

"_Esme? _What the _fuck?"_

"Oh god, let's get the hell out of here!"

"Who's the prude now, kids?"

* * *

The Forks PD rookie (whose name was actually Officer Ryan) was staring at his plate of food in the diner, willing himself not to barf all over it. Today had already been singularly awful, what with spending two hours in the McGruff suit, which not only made March in Washington feel like August in the Sudan, but apparently had not been washed since the start of the millennium. Then a box came in the mail, and next thing he knew the chief was calling him into the office for a "little chat." Ryan was a little afraid to eat anything, lest his imminent electrocution render him unable to control his gag reflex or other bodily functions. _Please, God,_ he prayed,_ don't let me shit myself._

Fortunately for him, Izzy was on duty today. She picked up the trail of something that smelled alarming to her nose, and for once it wasn't lovesick vampire. Mark, who was glad to see his dog performing her task so enthusiastically, followed her to an ugly little residence in a trailer park on the west side of town. There he found three muscular men with brown complexions, no shirts, and (curiously) Crisco-covered skin. They were beating the ever-loving shit out of four scruffy-looking white men.

Two back-up units, two calls to the county Crime Scene Unit, and two hours later, all seven men were sitting in the Forks City Jail. The white guys clammed up tight, but the others demanded to give their statements immediately, insisting that they were performing a public service by putting an end to the local meth lab.

When Charlie arrived at the station, Bella in tow, he did something you could only get away with in the movies, or with people who thought things worked like they did in the movies.

"I wouldn't normally say this," Charlie began, sitting in the interrogation room with the young man he'd often seen fishing alone as a child, "but you've got rights. I think you might want a lawyer, Sam."

"I think you're going to be sending me home," Sam grunted, "unless you want trouble with the council."

Chief Swan had to try very hard not to roll his eyes. "You don't get immunity because of where you live. There's only one council who can make trouble for me, and that's the Forks City Council. If you tear up some drug dealers on tribal land and your council decides to let it go, that's up to them, but this is _my_ jurisdiction."

"I brought down four drug pushers who do as much damage to your young people as they do to mine, and this is the thanks I get?"

"Look," Charlie said, "I understand. Hell, if I could I'd give you a medal. But my officer witnessed you committing a crime. Justified or not, we can't just ignore it."

The large, muscle-bound man, who had a responsibility to his tribe but also had a pressing need not to acquire a criminal record, eyed Charlie. "What are you getting at, Chief?" He always could smell an under-the-table deal from a mile away.

Charlie appreciated not having to waste any time. "Those assholes are never going to testify in their own defense, and no public defender worth a shit is going to want them on the stand. I'll tell Mark to leave out your vigilante punishment in his report and list you all as witnesses if you do me a favor."

Sam paled a little when Chief Swan explained what he wanted, and asked to speak to Jared and Paul first. They may have been stronger than most people, but they were still made of flesh and blood, and they knew this wasn't going to be pleasant. But it was better to go through pain and suffering than to bring dishonor to the whole of the Quileute tribe.

Nobody could say who was more surprised when Bella Swan walked into the interrogation room: her, or the man she recognized as the Cullen-hater from First Beach. Her greeting came out soft and nervous; Sam didn't bother to return it. He was too busy trying to figure out why she smelled like she'd drenched herself in whore perfume. So it was that a harried, exhausted, anxiety-ridden Bella spent her evening "shocking the dogs."

That night, she spent a quality half hour locked in her room with Silicone Freddie Prinze Jr., just trying to relieve the stress.

In a quiet corner of the forest, Edward held Bella's shirt to his nose and guiltily indulged in a little "draining of the beast" on his own.

Some of his fantasies weren't even about blood.


	22. Sweet Child of Mine

_Sorry for the long wait. Hope you like this one! Believe it or not, it's been revised like 200 times.  
_

_Previously: Bella and Edward like talking to each other. Also, Charlie figured out she'd entertained some late-night company on the front porch. And Bella told him about the Port Angeles incident. So he made her practice using her new Taser on three arrestees, the topless Quileute men we all know. It was a weird, long-ass day.  
_

Sweet Child of Mine

"Where are you going, son?" Carlisle asked.

"Nowhere."

Middle of the week, middle of the night, and Edward was dressed in his black turtleneck and climbing shoes. And scaling the kitchen counter to reach into the top shelf of the fourth cabinet from the left. "Why do you need a Waterford crystal vase?" On second glance at his son's belt loop, Carlisle added, "And the key to the green house? It's too early for Esme's bulbs to bloom."

"Not really," Edward said quietly, still not answering Carlisle's questions. Which Carlisle decided was answer enough.

"I thought we talked about this."

"Bella called," Edward explained hesitantly, hopping down from the countertop. "I'm going by for a visit." He was under strict orders to remain sitting on the window ledge the whole time, and Bella would need to bundle up to combat the late-winter air seeping into her room, but it was something. He wondered if she wanted to talk about whatever she didn't want to discuss during the day, and if it might explain why she looked so upset when other students asked her if there was any truth to the rumor that there'd been a major drug bust yesterday. The flowers, he hoped, would help cheer her up. If he could just get out of his house before she fell asleep…

"Don't you think you've spent enough time with her during the day?"

"We have exactly one class together, and lunch."

Carlisle furrowed his brow. "I thought you stayed with her after school."

"She had Eric Yorkie over today, helping her with something." Edward tried to conceal the jealousy from his tone. It was irrational, and he knew it. Bella could have anyone over if she wanted to, and her request that he be gone so as not to 'scare Eric off' was not unreasonable. But Edward was still a guy. Jealousy came with the whole dating thing, didn't it? Why should he be jealous of Eric, though? Eric was a nerd—and not the modern meaning of the word nerd, 'a guy who enjoys some sci-fi/fantasy/comic-book thing that is, was, or will be made into a blockbuster action film with a big name director and badass explosions and shit,' but the old meaning of the word nerd, 'a guy who has zero chances of getting laid.'

"I see," Carlisle muttered, still staring at his son. "I just don't want you to overwhelm the poor girl. You've been spending so much time with her, and women need their space sometimes."

"She _asked _me to come by."

"Women often say one thing when they mean another."

"Oh for the love of _god,_" Edward scoffed. "I do live with three women, you know."

"But you're not in a romantic relationship with any of them. I've been married a long time, son."

"I'm quite certain when your wife makes plans to spend time with you, she expects you to show up. That's hardly the same thing as asking for an 'honest opinion' of whether a dress makes her look fat."

"Granted," Carlisle conceded, remembering a particularly unflattering yellow frock in 1985, the year of Ugly Pastel Business Attire. "My point is, it's tempting to focus all your attention on the new lady in your life, but you need to resist, or you'll smother her and ruin everything. You need to spend some time doing your own thing, so she knows you're still a whole person."

Edward sighed. Clearly his father had been reading back issues of _Cosmo _from the hospital waiting room again. Vampires did not think this way, not even the females. They did not shy away from obsession; even obsessed vampires could still hold ten different threads of thought in their working memory at once if they wanted to. If anything, single-mindedness was almost calming to most of their kind, like Ritalin to someone with ADD.

That didn't mean Carlisle's advice wasn't sound. Bella was still subject to mortal limitations, and in spite of how understanding she tried to be about what made Edward physically different, there hadn't been enough time for her to develop a complete concept of the mental differences.

On the other hand… "What do you think 'my own thing' is, exactly?"

"Pardon me?"

"You obviously have some idea of what makes me a whole person. What exactly are you suggesting I do?"

Carlisle stopped to think about this. What did any of his kids do anymore, besides play games, hunt, and go shopping? "Your piano…"

"I've composed a new song. I even worked on it today while you were at work."

"Your music collection?"

"It's not going anywhere, I have nothing to add to it just now, and I don't think there's any point in reorganizing it, do you?"

"A new book, perhaps?"

"The new John Sanford won't be available until next month. The only new stuff in the house is Alice's chic-lit, and I can't _stand _that…clownshit."

Carlisle laughed openly. "You _have _been spending a great deal of time with Bella, haven't you? Since when do you use words like that?"

"Can we just stop this?" Edward sighed.

Confused, Carlisle asked, "Stop what?"

"Stop pretending that we're in a rerun of _Father Knows Best_."

"Have I offended you?" Carlisle wondered.

"Offended me? You barely talk to me anymore unless I approach you or you need an extra set of hands to fix something or you're trying to solve a complex medical problem. And it's not just me; nobody sees you at home much these days. Esme's the only one who can get you to leave the hospital anymore."

"This is about attention?" Carlisle wouldn't have thought anyone in the house would want for attention with Esme's incessant mothering going on. Hadn't he gone out and helped Edward kidnap a rapist just the other day? They even had a Deep Discussion on the way. If that didn't count as quality time, then nothing did. "I'm not sure if you're complaining because you want less interaction with me or more, but whether we have an abundance of father-son time or very little, I'm still your father."

Edward paused, listening for the rest of his family. Esme was home, but the others had scattered, no doubt seeking seclusion for their lovemaking sessions. It had always grated on Edward's nerves when they copulated at home, all in the same house and usually at the same time, making him feel like the unopened jar of horseradish next to an enormous sex sandwich. Generally he appreciated their occasional efforts to vacate the premises and give him a night of peace. But lately he felt bothered no matter where anyone had sex, because just knowing what they were doing only served to emphasize what he was missing out on.

Tonight he was thankful once again, because he was going to say something that might start a fight if the others heard him repeating it.

"Do you know what Jasper likes to say about me these days?"

Carlisle did not.

"He says no one has taught me how to be a man," Edward revealed. "Since I've spent nearly a hundred years as your son, that's more of a reflection on you than it is on me."

Carlisle sighed to himself. Edward was in a position to know who Jasper actually intended to insult by making such statements, but that didn't mean Edward felt obligated to share that information. It paid to be wary of these tattle-tale moments. "Your point?"

"My point is that he's wrong," Edward explained. "I've watched you be a man for nearly a century. And before I died, I was man enough to marry and start a family if I chose." Not that he realized it was a particularly manly quality at the time, but he certainly stood up to his vampire family when they wanted to commit premeditated murder. "The problem isn't that I don't know how to be a man, it's that I don't know how to be a normal teenager."

"You spend eight hours a day surrounded by the minds of normal teenagers," Carlisle said needlessly.

"I've spent all that time judging them," Edward admitted, "not trying to learn anything about them. If I could, I'd ignore them all, every thought, because—and I'm sure Jasper will back me up on this—for all the unspoken things I hear about unrequited crushes and Facebook drama and cheating on final exams and boy bands and pornography, not a single bit of it has helped me understand anything about what it feels like to be young and human. Until now, with this girl who makes me think and ask questions and genuinely _feel_. I've tried to keep it quiet from everyone else in the family because I wanted it to be private. But I've kept it quiet from _you_ because honestly, nothing in your conscious thoughts indicated that you cared much about my relationship status, and I still haven't decided if that's a relief or a disappointment.

"So yes," he continued, "I am going to Bella's house now, to go be with her and talk to her for however long she'll let me. Her father would probably want to shoot me if he knew about it, and I'm relishing the fear of him too, because it's human, and I've never felt it before. So please, by all means, go back to ignoring me. I've had my fill of unsolicited advice, meddling, and judgmental attitudes from all the others."

Carlisle, who liked to think he wouldn't have put up with being spoken to this way from anyone else but Edward, said, "Perhaps now you can appreciate what you've put your brothers and sisters through all these years."

"What I've put _them _through?" Edward narrowed his eyes. "Rosalie and her narcissistic personality disorder and every hateful thing she's thought and said since you brought her in off the street against her will. Seventy-eight years of unwanted matchmaking attempts, because apparently I'm not enough if I'm on my own. Four generations of being the only bachelor in a house filled with lusty couples. Nine decades of listening to you justify bringing all these people into a life that _you _consider damnation. It's not just me annoying a group of saints, Carlisle. It's _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest _in this family, only nobody knows for sure which one of us is supposed to be Nurse Ratched."

Carlisle cracked a smile. "That's a bit of a stretch even for you, son."

"I've had to help cover up twenty-three murders, not including my time away from you," Edward said coldly, wiping the smile right of Carlisle's face. "Tell me again about the social evils of visiting my own girlfriend at her invitation."

"Fine, go, I won't stop you," Carlisle replied, not even trying to conceal how hurt he felt. "But while you're out playing the irresponsible boy, remember to use your adult brain. You can pretend to be afraid of bullets all you want, but what you need to worry about is coming within an inch of feeding on that girl by accident, _again_. If you've got a brand new murder to cover up in the morning, don't come crying to me to fix everything for you. I'll have my hands full with the manhunt her father is sure to launch."

Edward turned away without another word, leaving behind both the vase and the greenhouse key. Bella's father would have noticed flowers and started asking questions. Carlisle, for his part, rubbed his face, his favorite expression of parental frustration. _Damn teenagers._ "Esme?" he called out, as he often did after such parent-child interactions. "Why do we have five children?"

Rather than call back her usual Bill-Cosby-inspired response ("Because we do not! Want! _Six!_"), Esme grumbled from her desk, "Don't ask me, I'm not the one turning people left and right. I'm too busy saying the opposite of what I mean and worrying about how fat I look in a dress."

Carlisle lifted his eyes to the heavens, longing for a padded room.

* * *

"Are you warm enough?" Edward asked, carefully perched on the ledge, one leg dangling out the window. It looked terribly uncomfortable to Bella, not to mention unsafe, but he'd already assured her he was fine.

Bella herself sat in her rocking chair, swaddled in quilts like an oversized infant. "Trying not to sweat," she answered, enjoying the nippy air on her face. 'Enjoying' meaning tolerating, and 'nippy' meaning 45 degrees or so. "Are you sure _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_ isn't at least a _little_ bit true? The book was pretty convincing." She'd heard a movie version was being made, and she had to admit, she was intrigued by the idea of her second-favorite American president kicking "indestructible" vampire ass. She wasn't a hundred percent sure, but she thought Lincoln could take Edward in a fair fight (though neither of them stood a chance against Andrew Beats-The-Everloving-Shit-Out-Of-His-Own-Assassin-Because-He's-A-Lunatic-Badass Jackson).

"I may be old, but not _that _old," Edward said. "My brother assures me that Texas vampires weren't the least bit concerned with human politics back then. They had their hands full with wars of their own."

Rather than pursue this topic (because she was sure it was going to blow her mind), Bella returned to their game. "Your turn."

"Bear," Edward said, his mind jumping to his mountain-dwelling brother while simultaneously wondering what Bella would say, as always.

"Flag," Bella replied. "My grandparents are buried in California. Mom and I always see the state flag on the way to the cemetery every year. It's got a picture of the last wild California Grizzly on it."

"I used to live in California," Edward recalled. "Back in the mid-40s, after we left Washington. It wasn't quite as elegant as everyone likes to believe. There was a lot of drug abuse at that time. It made for some particularly terrifying mental pictures." He nearly shuddered, wishing he could forget. "Your turn."

Bella cast her mind about for something that might be of any interest at all to a vampire who'd been forced to repeat high school for generations. She wondered what he'd been like as a child, and if maybe he played with the same kind of toys as her grandparents. "Hobby horse."

Just like that, Edward was transported in time.

_Carved, wooden head, pure white, attached to an oval frame around his waist, making it seem as though he sat in the saddle, and a kind of…skirt?...around the frame, dangling like an elaborate horse blanket to hide his feet. A bright scarlet plume sprouting from the top of the horse's head. A Christmas gift from Mother, who told him in secret that it was meant be used the next day, for Lá Fhéile Stiofán. She taught him a rhyme to sing when no one else was around:_

_The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,_

_St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze,_

_Although he was little his honor was great,_

_Jump up me lads and give us a treat…_

"Saint Stephen's Day," Edward said slowly. "My little horse. I named it Fire, after its red feather. I would play in the fields, pretend I was a warrior, and sing the song Mother taught me…how curious."

"What's curious?" Bella wondered.

"I don't remember much about my life…my first life, that is. But sometimes, mostly when I'm with you, I find these forgotten memories of my family." He looked at her in wonder. "How is it that _you_ possess all the right retrieval cues?"

"I'm nothing special," Bella said earnestly (Edward thought he even heard a certain sadness in her voice). "I don't understand how you can read so many minds and never find something that sparks a memory."

He hesitated half a second, not wanting to admit that there was almost no one left in the world that was alive when he was born, or that technology had advanced so much and so quickly that it sometimes frightened him. There were entire weeks when he wouldn't leave the wilderness, simply because even suburban life felt like he'd been plunked down in the middle of a science fiction novel.

"For all that the world has changed, the constant seems to be groups of insecure teenagers who think 'being an individual' means following a popular trend," he shrugged. "The teachers are no better, spending more time trying to keep current than they do thinking about daily life a hundred years ago. And every time I try to talk to old people around here, they get scared and either brandish a shotgun or start having arrhythmia. It makes me feel like my cultural history has been erased."

"Maybe you need to start listening to little kids," Bella suggested.

"I tried about ten years ago. Their little brains are still developing, so the thoughts sound illogical and disjointed. I heard language acquisition, a collective obsession with _Dora the Explorer_, and an uncomfortable amount of attention to the expulsion of bodily fluids."

"That's disappointing," Bella mumbled, though to her it sounded like Edward stopped giving it much effort once he realized there was poop involved. "Don't you ever have this kind of conversation with your family?" _Seriously, aren't they **all** nostalgic old geezers?_ "Surely they'd remember some of the same stuff you do."

"The only minds I ever really pay careful attention to _are_ my family's," Edward lamented. "For much longer than you can imagine, whether any of us likes it or not. They sometimes dwell on the circumstances that led to their deaths, but mostly they don't like sharing their human memories, what few they have."

"So they just don't look back?" Bella gaped. "Not even about their parents?" Perhaps it was because of the type of relationship she had with her mother, or simply because she was so young, but she couldn't imagine a life in which she didn't spend at least part of every day loving, resenting, worrying, or even feeling embarrassed about the people who brought her into the world.

"Not around me," Edward said. "Not about that stuff. It's the kind of thing they hold sacred."

"Do they think you won't appreciate it?" Bella said, disbelieving.

"Not exactly," Edward sighed. "Secrets are a novelty in my family. If one of us manages to acquire one, and keeping it isn't detrimental to the others—and sometimes even if it is—we like having thoughts that are private. It makes us selfish with our human pasts."

"I suppose I understand," Bella said slowly, thinking.

"Do you?" Edward marveled. _How could you?_

"Just because I'm willing to share some of my memories with you doesn't mean I want you poking in my whole life, Edward," she pointed out. Thinking of the tribesmen's faces when she used her stun gun on them, she added, "Sometimes we're ashamed of the things we've done."

Edward, who still hadn't told Bella that he'd killed scores of people, wasn't sure how to reply. "But that's different," he finally said. "The stuff my brothers and sisters keep from me is from when they were just regular people, not monsters."

Bella looked at him strangely. She thought of her mother's response to the question of unforgivable offenses: _violent crime against innocent people._ She wondered what her mother would say about what she'd done to Sam and his friends, and if Renee would think it mattered that it was under orders, when Charlie was in Chief of Police mode, not Affable Father mode. _Did_ it matter? "Regular people can't have regrets?" she asked.

"Of course they can," Edward assured her. "Regrets are what separate normal people from sociopaths. But what's the point in a vampire regretting the things he did as a human, most of which are forgotten anyway? It was from another life, and that life is long over."

"No," Bella challenged him, "it's from the _same _life. It's not just a novelty, and it's _not _over."

"You don't know how badly I wish that were so," Edward brooded, thinking longingly of Fire, and of how he wished he had someone to pass down his mother's traditions to. He wondered if his long-forgotten cousin had any children. He still didn't know the young man's name, or if he'd survived the influenza epidemic long enough to marry.

"Then what are you doing here?" Bella demanded, sounding tired and unmoved.

Edward snapped back to the present, looking at the girl sitting right in front of him. "Excuse me?"

"If your life is over, and all the things that made you human are gone, why are you here with me?"

"Because…" Edward struggled, trying to answer her in a way that she wouldn't somehow take the wrong way (because she _was _a girl, after all). "First, I care about you, and second, when I'm with you, I feel alive."

"Interesting," Bella murmured. Edward couldn't decide if she meant that in a good way or not. (She didn't. She was beginning, however sleepily, to wonder if Edward understood the difference between feeling alive and _being_ alive. And for good reason. No matter what the substance of his argument with Carlisle or how much he claimed to relish the feeling of sneaking into a girl's room and risking her father's wrath, it wasn't like Edward sneaked into her house to actually do normal teenage stuff, like frenzied kissing or planning a clandestine road trip.)

Edward watched as Bella stifled a yawn. "I should let you get to bed,"

"That's probably a good idea," she mumbled. "I say dumb things when I'm sleepy."

"Like what?" Edward prompted, excited all over again.

Bella's eyes fluttered, and she rocked back in her chair. "I feel like I'm at a perpetual bar mitzvah here."

For a creature who didn't normally blink, Edward blinked a _lot _when talking to Bella. "Come again?"

"Charlie's always bringing home fish," Bella explained, yawning magnificently. "He takes it somewhere to be gutted and deboned, but I don't know what the heck to do with it. We don't have a lot of fresh seafood in the middle of Arizona, you know. All I know how to make is my grandmother's gefilte fish, so I make it all the time. Charlie keeps saying 'What's with all the fish balls?' And I'm like 'I didn't know fish _had_ balls,' and he's all 'They do, but I sure didn't think they'd cook up _this _big.'"

Edward gaped. "You did _not_ have a conversation about fish testicles with your father."

"Why not? What do you want us to do, argue?" When not in uniform, Charlie was just like any other dude, and regular, well-adjusted dudes didn't _want _to start epic fights with their family about trifling shit.

"It's just so inappropriate."

"He said the same thing about my recipe. Said fish weren't meant to be cooked with sugar."

"No I meant, because you're a young lady—"

"You gotta loosen up, man," Bella slurred, her eyes closed. "Just 'cause he's my dad…everything's not all serious business and proper conversations. Sometimes there's dirty jokes about fish patties…grape juice and…gummy worms…"

"Bella? What kind of project did Eric help you with today?"

But she was asleep, and unable to tell him that Eric cancelled on her due to a family emergency. He would find out later, when Alice came home and informed him that she had, in a moment of jealousy-by-proxy, manufactured the Yorkie family emergency by slipping Mrs. Yorkie a winning lottery scratch-off ticket worth $5000.

Edward listened for Charlie's snores before he slipped into the room, carefully lifted Bella from her rocking chair (oh, how wonderful to have her close again, even if she was mummy-shaped from all the quilts), and quickly deposited her in bed. He whispered his good night, scanned the room for anything unusual, and shut the window on the way out, smiling to himself at his steadily improving self-control. Bella mumbled something foreign and exotic in her sleep. He hoped it was something romantic about him.

Unfortunately, she was just reciting the ingredients to Renee's Three Bean and Marshmallow Casserole. She'd always felt it tasted like bad decisions and bewildered stares. Her grandmother hated it, _especially_ at large gatherings, and tried to sabotage it every time, as creatively as possible, with everything from peanut butter to ashtray contents to pressurized air cannons. (That one got applause from every single child in Bella's third-grade class.)

_Yafa, _her grandmother's voice murmured, calling Isabella by her Hebrew name as she was wont to do. _Remember what I taught you. Use the tools God put in your hands._

"But I don't have a pack of cigarettes…"

_You don't need the cigarettes, girl. You just need the fire…_


	23. And You Give Yourself Away

_I should be doing homework right now. Instead I am uploading this chapter. I hope you enjoy it!  
_

_Previously: Edward spent a lot of time talking about himself, thinking about his past, and relating everything Bella said back to himself in some way. Proving once again that a brilliant conversationalist is just someone willing to talk to you about **you**._

From Twilight Chapter 11: "Complications"

And You Give Yourself Away

All morning long, Edward had been asking Bella one question after another.

He had dual intentions, though Bella only knew of the first one. One: get to know her better. Two: continue acclimating to her scent.

If Bella had been omniscient, she would have been able to tell Edward that he was having much more success with the second goal than the first.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the need for the two of them to get to know each other beyond the supernatural stuff. No, the problem was that Edward asked questions that had nothing to do with who Bella was as a person. _What's your favorite color? Did you ever have any pets? Who was your best friend when you were growing up? What kind of flowers do you prefer?_

So far the only interesting questions had been _Who are your heroes _and _Do you have any tattoos? _(The answers: Edmond Locard, the Sherlock Holmes of France; Rosalind Franklin, the molecular biologist who would have discovered the DNA double helix if her asshole boss hadn't stolen all her work and given it to that acid-tripper Francis Crick; and Joe Davis, the bioartist who, in protest of existing spacecraft plaques and transmissions into space that omitted anatomically correct representations of females, recorded the sounds of the vaginas of the entire Boston Ballet, translated them into phonemes, words, and a poem, and used them to broadcast a twenty minute message into various sun-like stars in outer space, because fuck NASA's puritanical-political, Barbie doll bullshit. And no, no tattoos, because of the bleeding.)

It was as though Edward was cataloguing her, so that when she died, he'd be able to preserve her memory for eternity. Which was not only _really_ depressing, it was also not going to be accomplished properly if he didn't start asking questions with more substance. Shouldn't a man his age be more interested in talking about ideas, not things?

She wondered why Edward didn't ask her anything about religion, if she ever had any sexual experiences, whether she was a political liberal or a conservative or somewhere in between, or what she wanted to do with her life when she grew up. True, her grandfather had always said not to talk sex, religion, or politics at the table, and Edward was born long before her grandpa's _parents_, but this was a twenty-first century high school cafeteria, for crying out loud—people talked about inappropriate things at the table all the time. It wasn't like they could discuss them in the middle of class.

"Take a break, will you?" Bella finally sighed when they sat down with their food. "I need my mouth to eat, and I prefer not to talk with my mouth full."

"Right, sorry," he smiled. As far as Edward was concerned, the day was going swimmingly. Which just goes to show that boys are morons, even telepathic, hundred-and-ten-year-old vampires.

Glad to have a reprieve, Bella contemplated her meal. Chicken salad today. She didn't keep kosher, but still, it would have been nice if she could be sure the cafeteria didn't have pork in absolutely _everything,_ from the mystery meat to the salad to the off-brand gelatin, and yes, this chicken salad as well. Four of the Jewish families within her school district had teenaged children at Forks High, and one usually brought lunch from home (though that may have been because the cafeteria food was gross, period). They were all underclassmen, but Bella knew them just enough from monthly Shabbat services in Port Angeles to wave hello in the hallway.

Thinking longingly of Phoenix, where she could easily attend both a Jewish temple _and _a Buddhist one, sometimes on the same day, Bella began humming. It would not do to miss her home. In all reality, unless Phil found a spot on an Arizona team or Renee took it in her head to file for a divorce, Bella would probably never go back there again, at least not anytime soon. It wasn't the kind of place a vampire seemed likely to visit, and for now, she didn't like the thought of going anywhere that Edward couldn't follow.

"What's that you're humming now?" Edward wondered. It seemed Bella was always humming something, whether she was eating, reading, drawing his eyes (he couldn't bring himself to tell her he knew they were _his_ eyes), or just lost in thought. This hum was quite different in terms of musical composition. "Is it an old country song?"

Emmett and Jasper were forever singing old tunes, mostly from the Civil War era, that sounded appropriate for the _Cold Mountain_ soundtrack, or were even _from_ the _Cold Mountain_ soundtrack itself—they were big fans. There was a full year when Edward could not get the lyric _'Mess with me and I'll pull the trigger, then we'll join the band!'_ out of his head, his brothers belted it out so often, usually with Emmett playing the notes on his fiddle. It was sung to the tune of "Skip to the Lou, My Darling." Imagine having _that_ in your head for all of eternity.

"You're ridiculous, in case you don't know," Bella pointed out when he told her about the "Skip to the Lou" thing. "I was just humming my haftarah."

"Oh," Edward answered, remembering that a haftarah is basically a portion of the Old Testament put to song. "I didn't realize…are you practicing for something specific?"

"No, I had my bat mitzvah ages ago," Bella replied.

At their table, the other Cullens shared a ripple of surprise. Edward hadn't mentioned Bella's ethnic origin, Alice had assumed Bella was keeping it a secret because she usually wore her Star of David necklace inside her clothes, and the rest of them hadn't been able to tell she was Jewish by looking at her. Emmett and Jasper in particular each came from a time and place when people honestly believed Jews had horns. Even though they now knew that this was a ridiculous myth based on a sculpture based on a mistranslation, some ancient part of their brains expected all Jews to be physically obvious in some visible way. Rosalie, in contrast to the country boys, merely shrugged like the upstate New Yorker that she was, though a corner of her Depression-era-banker's-daughter mind did wonder if Bella was secretly rich.

"Sometimes I just like to sing the words again when I'm homesick or sad," Bella was saying. "It's comforting."

It had been decades since Edward thought of any place as home, at least in the same way Bella did. There was a time, of course, the first ten years of his new life, when he maintained a sentimental attachment to Chicago, birthplace of his soul, keeper of his childhood, final resting place of his parents, his grandparents, and his pet cat Captain Flint. But eventually the human memories lost their clarity and meaning. The city changed too much during the years he was away, his parents' house was condemned and bulldozed, and Second City became just another place in a never-ending series of them, home of Al Capone and the Sears Tower, with O'Hare finally turning it into nothing more than a smoggy pit stop whenever he had to fly across the country. On the rare occasion when he did feel something akin to homesickness, it would only leave him doubly depressed when he realized he had no form of alleviation at all.

"May I hear it?" Edward whispered.

An odd request, but Bella wasn't about to deny him. She sipped her water first and began the chant, just the first few verses. They were alone at their table, far from nearly everyone else, so only Edward (and his brothers and sisters three tables down) heard the rise and fall of the trope. It was so strange to them, the sound put all five of the vampires in a kind of mystified trance; none of them moved a muscle for three whole minutes.

"What does it mean?" Edward asked when she was done singing.

Bella struggled to remember the months she spent learning the text and its meaning in Hebrew school. "It's from _Shmuel._ It's about…putting your trust in God. David put all his trust in God, so God helped him defeat all his enemies, even though they were stronger than David. There was lightning, flooding, earthquakes, a volcano, the whole shebang. God rewarded David's faith and good behavior by causing a natural disaster that wiped out an entire army, so that the invaders' people would become submissive to David instead of, you know, wiping out my ancestors."

Edward let out a low, long whistle, unsure how else to react. He remembered that Bible passage from II Samuel and wondered if the translation was different in Bella's version. "Do you believe it?"

"You mean do I believe it happened, or do I think it was justified?"

"Either," he shrugged. "Both."

Bella shrugged right back. "I don't know. A _man_ wrote this. It's supposed to be the song David sang, as recorded by a prophet, whose job it was to keep everyone from sinning as badly as David had in the past. I'm pretty sure a lot of it is bullshit."

This bothered Edward. "Don't you believe your rabbi?"

She smiled. "If you tell me you had a fight with your family and describe it as 'World War II,' I know you don't mean Germany, Japan, and Italy all got together and started launching weapons in your living room. It's just hyperbole, and you'd be using it to make a point."

Clearly, Edward reflected, she had no idea what _really_ started World War II. Few humans did. "But…don't you believe your own bible?" he asked insistently.

"Why should I?" Bella asked in return. "Because it says so, right there in the Bible? Sometimes the holy books contradict themselves. Sometimes they aren't supported by geological or archaeological evidence. Even rabbinical scholars don't agree on what it all means, and they spend their entire lives studying it."

"Hmm…" Edward responded, still confused.

"My rabbi _and_ the monks both taught me the same thing: don't believe what you read just because you read it. Ask questions. Reason it out. Don't take everything so literally. Leave room for interpretation."

"Monks?"

"Oh yeah," she laughed. "I'm a kind of a Buddhist, too." The moment she said _Buddhist,_ she waited to hear what many American teens seemed to say, even on the internet: _How can you worship a statue of a little, bald, fat man?_ There was a time when she'd replied with smartass remarks about the perceived authority of beards and long hair, but now her ready answer was: _I don't worship anything. That's not what Buddhism is._

Instead, Edward surprised her. "_That's _why you quoted the Dhammapada that time."

"That's right," she smiled, feeling relieved, and also glad someone else at school read such things. "That's exactly right."

"How did you become a Buddhist?"

"Well they don't baptize you into it," Bella said lightly. "I skipped out on my mother's line dancing class one day and went to the Buddhist temple across the street for forty-five minutes. The meditation thing didn't seem any sillier to me than prayer. They talked, I listened. They gave me pamphlets, I read them. I just kept going back."

"O…kay…" Edward had a difficult time imagining Bella on her knees, chanting. Especially with Renee across the street in cowboy boots.

"I'm also a practicing witch."

_"What?"_

"I'm kidding, Edward."

"I can never tell."

"I know. I like it," she grinned. "So what are you?"

He smiled back. "A vampire." Even though his voice was so low only Bella could hear him, there was something liberating about saying it out loud.

"Does that mean you worship Satan or something?" Bella whispered.

"What? _No!_"

"Because I can always order _Satanic Verses_ on the internet if it helps me understand you better."

"You can borrow my copy," he offered. "_Satanic Verses_ isn't a satanic bible; it's a novel about two Muslims."

"Oh." Bella smiled again and swallowed a quick bite of her chicken salad. "Then I will certainly borrow it."

"Is it a problem?" Edward worried. "My not being Jewish?" It shouldn't be a bigger issue than the fact that he wasn't _human,_ but maybe it was important to Bella.

"Only if my grandmother were still alive. Then you might have needed to take conversion classes just to humor her." Bella smiled at the idea of a vampire trying to keep kosher, which would mean abstaining from any kind of blood at all. "She actually lived in Israel until she was sixteen—she's the reason Renee and I use conversational Hebrew. She took us both on vacation there when I was three, probably hoping Mom would find a Jewish husband to replace Charlie." It was a poorly-conceived plan, in retrospect; Renee was so frightened by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence that she made her mother call the travel agent and book return tickets home less than 24 hours later, hot Israeli bachelors be damned. "Even though she loved _me_, I don't think my grandmother ever forgave my mom for marrying outside her faith."

"Most people used to think that way when I was young," Edward recalled. "My real father was an Irish Protestant, although he was able to pass as English in origin to avoid discrimination. My mother was an Irish Catholic, which was extremely unpopular in Chicago a hundred years ago. I imagine it was difficult for her to remain faithful to her beliefs. I don't remember her ever taking me to Mass."

Bella knew there was a difference between various denominations of Christianity just like there were different Movements of Judaism, and she could even imagine that there was just as much disagreement about the minutiae of doctrine. She didn't see where the hatred came in, why the Christians seemed to lack cohesion when they all believed in the same virgin birth, and what being "Irish" had to do with anything. Ethiopian Jews and Asian Jews were still Jews, even if their skin color was different from hers. All Jews were part of the same great family in Bella's view of things, no matter if they were Orthodox or Reform or Ashkenazi or Sephardic.

Between her liberal-minded American mother and a cultural climate that encouraged the celebration of diversity, Bella had been born into a world so far removed from Edward's that she didn't even realize how extraordinary the difference really was. If she'd been born in Edward's time, or even twenty years later, the both of them would have been labeled as racial mongrels, undesirable company to any self-respecting Anglo-Saxon, and they certainly wouldn't have been expected to cross racial or religious boundaries by forming a romantic relationship with each _other_. Now to nearly everyone around them, Edward and Bella were just a couple of white people having lunch together. The only ones in the cafeteria who could fully appreciate the vast social changes that went into the making of this moment weren't human anymore.

Bella swallowed her food, oblivious to the fact that in Edward's mind, this was an intercultural, interethnic, almost interracial conversation, and that talking openly about their differences made him feel more human, more _normal,_ than nearly a century of pretending to be just like everyone else.

"So are you still a Christian?" she asked, twirling her plastic knife in her fingers like a baton, which Edward took as a sign that her hands were feeling much better.

"Sort of," he said, though he knew this wasn't the best way to answer. "Mostly I just kept the guilt."

Remembering what she still could about the first five years after her parents' divorce, when she and Renee lived with Savta and Zeyde, Bella could sympathize with imposed guilt. Any unusual choice Renee made was more than just 'a terrible decision;' everything she did was met with 'Why are you punishing us?' That was why Renee claimed teaching jobs were easier to find and cost of living was lower in Phoenix—so she could live the way she wanted without her parents slinging daily guilt trips at her.

"Do you still believe in God and heaven and all that stuff," Bella asked carefully, "now that you're…different?"

Edward contemplated the question seriously. It was a topic he generally avoided giving much thought; his life was usually depressing enough already. He _really_ didn't want to feel that way right now, not when he had so much to be happy about.

"I…" he struggled. "It's there, in the back of my head. I don't always feel one particular way about it. But that's a longer conversation."

"Fair enough," Bella nodded, picking at the last of her lunch. "When you were human, did you believe in…your kind?"

"I don't remember," Edward shrugged. He noticed the way Bella kept avoiding the word 'vampire,' but he didn't comment on it. She could say it when she was ready. "Probably not. I seem to recall being more fascinated by _Treasure Island_ than vampire stories as a boy, and at seventeen the Great War was too great a reality to believe in demons." He didn't mention that his mother _did_ believe in vampires—that too, was for the longer conversation. "Did you believe in my kind before you came to Forks?"

Bella had difficultly answering what seemed like a straightforward question. It wasn't that the sentence 'Yes I believed in the possibility of vampires' made her sound crazy, or rather, it wasn't _only_ that. She'd heard her grandmother's stories about the _aluqah _as a child, but as with all legends, she thought they were exaggerations. As a student of science, admitting to a belief in the supernatural was like saying she believed four-leaf clovers could influence the outcome of major sporting events. Then again, as a Buddhist, she believed metaphysics and ancient knowledge sometimes offered a more complete explanation for otherwise inexplicable things.

"The short answer is 'Kind of,'" she replied. "Once upon a time," by which she meant _in my goth phase that I'm not ready to admit to,_ "I thought there was some merit to the whole Renfield's Disease idea. There was too much worldwide historical documentation to discount vampirism completely, but the details varied so much that it was difficult to find more in common than diet, and even that was iffy. Like those Japanese ones with heads shaped like a bowl—"

"Oh, _kappas_," Edward nodded. "They're a different creature entirely. Almost extinct now thanks to the atomic bombs, but there are still a few in hiding. I've never seen one in the United States, though."

Bella's eyes popped. "Seriously?"

Edward wrinkled his nose, an expression similar to Skunk Face. "I met some on a trip to Tokyo. Bitter, resentful things primarily concerned with good manners. They're always going on about how young people in their country need to stop being so rude to each other, stop obsessing over Hello Kitty paraphernalia, and get back to their noble, respectful roots." After a moment's reflection, he added, "Really, they're just angry because nobody bows to them anymore or throws cucumbers in the rivers for them. They _love_ cucumbers."

"That part's _true?_" Bella gaped.

Edward nodded. "It's also true that they love to eat children. But that's what the cucumbers are for—the parents carve their kids' names into the cucumbers and throw them into the river or pond where the family bathes. The _kappa _repays their kindness by not feeding on them." He shuddered. "Their feeding process is revolting. I won't go into specifics, since you just ate, but let's just say it's scatological in nature."

"Ugh," Bella groaned. "What do they even _look_ like?"

Edward thought about this. "Short, about the size of the average third-grader. I don't know if you've ever played World of Warcraft, but they look something like a cross between a murloc and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle."

"You're screwing with me," Bella smirked.

"Oh," Edward clarified, "but the hairy ones called _Hyōsube _don't have shells."

"You are so full of it," Bella laughed. She stood up, intending to pretend his bullshit was enough to make her leave the table, but when she looked around she realized the cafeteria was empty. "Crap. We'll be late for class."

Edward rose to join her. His first instinct was to offer his arm, but he repressed it. Part of him was afraid that he'd break her arm by accident. (This was stupid—he didn't break piano keys, pencils, or glass vases unless he did so deliberately. Humans were made of stronger stuff than glass.) But another part of him realized that not touching her was a wonderful way to build up his anticipation. So instead he stuck close to her, this girl who sang songs in a language he didn't understand (he _loved _that he didn't understand), who moderated faith with reason and tempered hard facts with an open mind, who could laugh at him and herself. He'd learned more about her during their lunch period than he had all day.

He also made a mental note to stop by the grocery store that night for some cucumbers, and to search the garage for his old whittling knife. Just in case.

* * *

*scatological: of or relating to the study of excrement. According to Wikipedia and other sources, a _kappa_ feeds on humans by sucking out their _shirikodama,_ a mythical ball inside the anus.


	24. Suspicious Minds

_Previously: Monday Bella got attacked in Port Angeles. Tuesday she had to practice using her new Taser. Wednesday Edward had an argument with Carlisle. Thursday at school Edward decided to play 20 questions. It's now Thursday evening, and it's time to play a new game: Truth or Consequences._

_In case anyone is wondering, I set this story in 2011._

Suspicious Minds

"Okay," Bella said, straining against her seatbelt as she turned her body toward Edward, "but all I'm saying is, if Alice knew it was going to happen, then why didn't any of you warn anybody who could prevent it?"

"I _tried,_" Edward reassured her, steering into her neighborhood. "It was like the Cold War all over again. It had to be totally and completely anonymous, so I crossed an international border and called from a random payphone at four o'clock in the morning, but I _did_ try. It didn't matter. The CIA, the FBI, and the NSA were so busy playing games with each other, it was like they forgot why their agencies were created in the first place. I wasn't the only one to provide them with legitimate intelligence, and yet—"

"And yet," Bella sighed, "thousands of people died needlessly, and now we're entrenched in wars that can't be won."

"It's depressing," Edward mumbled. "Alice thinks we'll have the troops in Iraq home for Christmas, but that's not a certainty."

"Here's hoping," Bella said, without much optimism. "So where were _you_ when it actually happened?"

"Alaska," he answered, "staying with—oh, hell."

"What?"

Edward gripped his steering wheel with both hands, looking like it took a good deal of effort not to splinter it. "You have visitors."

Bella strained her eyes, trying to see through the rain pelting the windshield. An unfamiliar car sat in her driveway, and a young man with long, black hair stepped out of the driver's side.

_Shit,_ she swore internally.

_Shit,_ Edward cursed, too, but not quite for the same reason.

"I _told _Charlie it was a bad idea," Bella muttered.

"What was?" Edward asked, suddenly confused.

"Can you tell me what they want?" she said, ignoring his question.

"The boy primarily seems interested in seeing you…with a secondary goal of keeping his father from saying anything embarrassing," Edward discovered. "The man is upset with Charlie…and you."

"I was afraid of that," Bella sighed.

"Good god, woman! You electrocuted three people?"

"I _stunned _them," Bella said defensively, "and it wasn't my idea. It was Charlie's."

"And you didn't tell me about it?"

"I keep trying to forget it ever happened." She blew a stray hair out of her face, frustrated and nervous. "Are they pissed at me?"

"Actually, they've both switched focus," Edward frowned.

"To what?"

"Me."

Billy was upset about a Cullen spending one-on-one time with a teenage girl, even though, obviously, five of them went to public school with hundreds of human teenagers every day and nobody ever got hurt. The coven-master had easy access to weak, unconscious patients and a plethora of blood bags, yet in two years Billy had never given the order to run them out of town. But a teenage girl riding in a car with a boy vampire? Oh _hell _no.

Jake, on the other hand, was annoyed because the only girl who'd ever shown the slightest bit of interest in him had a new boyfriend. Bella was irritating because she talked too much, but she was still a real, live girl with boobs and everything, and he'd had years of practice tuning out his sisters whenever they started babbling about make-up or romance novels or some shit. He'd been hoping tonight might lead somewhere, even if it was just an awkward, furtive make-out session in the kitchen while the men argued on the front porch or arm wrestled for dominance or whatever. But some guy had beaten Jake to the punch, damn it, so now his whole night was a waste. Stupid…older, probably handsome guy.

"What do you mean, 'you?' Why do you sound like that's a terrible thing?" Bella asked. "I thought they thought vampirism was just a legend."

"Their children do," Edward corrected her. "The elders know better."

Bella didn't have time to ponder whether Billy, a man in his mid-forties at most, actually qualified as an elder when she'd seen at least ten elderly people milling around the reservation during her recent visit. She also had no time to get bent out of shape that Jacob, who was only two years younger than her, was a "child" to Edward, but she was somehow an appropriately dateable age for a centenarian. There wasn't even time to ask what it meant for all parties concerned that Billy Black, armed with a full knowledge of Cullen vampire status, had just seen Bella and Edward together, and whether she should expect some kind of impromptu supernatural throw-down, because just then Edward turned an ear toward a far-off sound only he could hear and announced:

"Your father is almost home."

Bella exhaled, momentarily reflecting on the clusterfuck that was her life.

"Get them indoors," Edward insisted, touching Bella's wrist just once, careful but urgent. He wished he could kiss her, just on the forehead, but there was an audience to consider. "Call me when they leave, and I'll explain everything."

She gave Edward one last look, uncertainty printed across her face, and brushed his fingers with her own before climbing out of the car, wondering what kind of hell might be unleashed, how Charlie was going to react, and (nonsensically) whether her trig teacher would accept "massive shitstorm" as an excuse for not turning in her homework.

"Hey," Jacob called out, trying not to sound too bummed, just in case Bella and her boyfriend weren't exclusive and his evening could be salvaged. "You remember my dad, Billy?"

"Hi Jake, hi Billy," she said, trying to sound like there was nothing unusual going on. "Come inside. I'll get the heater going for you." She held on to Jacob's useless umbrella while he helped his father into a wheelchair and pushed him to the front porch. Ushering them in, she managed to get a single glimpse of Edward's car pulling away.

_Wait just a damn minute,_ she mused as the glow from the headlights receded. _Why does Edward have to leave? I thought the treaty only barred him from entering reservation lands. Isn't Forks technically on the Cullen side of the boundary? What the hell, man?_

xXxXx

"So," Bella said to her guests, calling upon all her years of experience with her mother's annoying boyfriends who she was expected to greet politely, no matter how unwelcome, untimely, or un-sober their visits. She handed Jake and his dad the two towels she kept in a cabinet near the entryway, figuring their long hair would be just as uncomfortably soaked as hers always was. "Would you like something to drink?"

"A beer," Billy said immediately, feeling very much in need of a drink after seeing his lifelong friend's only daughter alone in a car with a Cullen. Even if she _was _a man-burner. Hell, _especially _because she was a man-burner.

"Dad, you know you can't have alcohol with your diabetes medication—" Jacob said worriedly.

"I'm not the one driving, you are," Billy interrupted. Staring up at Bella with a look she could only describe as suspicious, he said, "Got any Vitamin R?"

Bella hated it when people made her feel young and powerless to refuse. For abandoning her like a damn coward, Edward was going to be in the doghouse—no, the _shit_house. But she wasn't a child, she wasn't powerless, and her father would be pulling in the driveway any second now.

She stood up straight and didn't allow herself to flinch or look away. "I have to wait for Charlie before I start giving away his beer. House rules. Would you like some water or coffee?"

"Sure, water's fine," Billy grumped, rolling himself into the living room and scowling at nothing in particular. Jake shot Bella an apologetic look, which she shrugged at.

"Bella!" Charlie called out less than a minute later, hand on his holster, eyes alert and moving. "Whose car is that?

"Easy, Charlie," Billy said from the living room. "I borrowed some sturdier wheels to come see you. You up for watching the Mariner's game?"

From her spot in the kitchen doorway, Bella watched carefully as Charlie did a double take and relaxed his hands. "Billy?" he said, obviously surprised. "Hey."

"They got here just before you did," Bella said quietly, holding up two glasses and moving toward the living room. "I was bringing them some water."

"I'd rather have a beer," Billy called out insistently.

"Dad," Jacob groaned.

Bella closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and let her breath out slowly. Noticing this, Charlie took the water glasses from her. When Bella opened her eyes again, they shared a look. Charlie knew very well how gruff Billy could get when his blood sugar was out of whack, and he knew Bella wouldn't like being treated that way. He also knew Billy hadn't come here, after a year and a half of almost total mutual silence, just to throw back a few and watch a random ball game.

"I'm out of beer," Charlie announced, earning a smile from his daughter, who knew he had a case of Rainier in the garage. "Maybe if we ask nicely, Bella will fix us a snack."

"Yes, please, if it's no trouble," Jacob said right away, hoping that being extra polite would make up for his father's attitude (even though all it did was highlight the difference). "Nothing sugary for my dad, please."

"Grilled cheese with tomato okay?" Bella asked, looking away from her father and meeting Billy's unhappy eyes.

The man nodded, moving his gaze to Charlie before ordering his son to help Bella in the kitchen.

"So your dad finally decided to come visit," Bella whispered to Jacob, pulling ingredients from the fridge.

"Yeah," Jake said, feeling uncomfortable. "I'm really sorry about how he's acting. It's been over four hours since he last ate, and his meds don't improve his mood."

Bella chose not to point out that Billy had not asked for food. "It happens," she said in monotone. She probably would have been more sympathetic (but also more hurt) if she thought for one second she could attribute his attitude solely to a medical condition and not a number of other unrelated issues.

"He just wanted to talk to Charlie about something," Jake assured her, "or I thought he did. We didn't mean to ambush your…date or whatever."

"Just getting a ride," Bella said, her irritation with Edward making her able to lie about him. She twirled the spatula in her fingers like a little baton. "Helps me save on gas money. Grab the frying pan from that cabinet, please."

"So who was it?" Jacob asked, not realizing that his question sounded a little nosier than he meant.

Deciding there was no point in lying, she said, "Edward Cullen."

Jacob smiled, trying to cover a needless sense of shame. "That explains my dad's face."

"Right," Bella said. "The old feud."

"It's stupid," Jacob told her. "I mean, what did Old Man Cullen's adopted great-grandkids ever do to us, right?"

"Really," Bella muttered, though she knew who Old Man Cullen really was. Technically, she couldn't prove whether Dr. Cullen had or had not done anything terrible to the Quileute tribe four generations ago, either—it wouldn't make any sense to move to Forks if there had been bloodshed in the past, but if there had been, Edward might not be forthcoming about it now, and Jacob might not know exactly what it was. "You think your dad's going to make an issue of it with Charlie?"

Sighing, Jacob admitted, "It's already an issue. That's actually why Charlie and my dad stopped talking to each other."

Confused, Bella asked, "What do you mean?"

After taking a moment to ponder how it was that he always ended up telling Bella things he never meant to tell anyone, _ever,_ and also to wonder how he could maybe stop getting himself into this position, Jacob started talking. He explained about the tribal ban on seeking treatment at the hospital, and that it was only in place because of Dr. Cullen. (While Jacob's grandparents had been distrustful of white doctors, perhaps rightfully so at the time, Jake felt that sentiment belonged to the past, not to the present—he was sensitive, if not well-versed or tactful, about race relations because, like Leah Clearwater, he felt old grudges impeded growth).

He told Bella about how Harry Clearwater and the younger members of the tribe disagreed with the ban, and most of the Quileutes who lived off the rez ignored the ban altogether. He recalled how Charlie told Billy off something fierce when he found out about the whole situation a couple years ago. And he asked her to _please, please _not repeat this to anyone, because it was supposed to be a tribe secret.

Bella listened, growing increasingly horrified by several things: 1) Billy actually thought Dr. Cullen would hurt people, even though he'd probably never even met the guy in person, 2) he wouldn't allow his fellow tribe members to seek emergency treatment from a _different _doctor at the same hospital, which made her wonder what exactly his position was on life or death situations, and 3) Edward hadn't told her about any of this, except to verify that he had, in fact, lived in another small town in Washington a long time ago. Not in any phone calls, late-night visits, nor lunch-time discussions, had this hospital ban stuff ever come up. It was all _venom and razor sharp teeth_ this and _Jack Lord was the greatest TV actor of his time_ that and _in my day, an upright piano cost twenty-five dollars from Sears and Roebuck._

"So is your dad here to hash it out or something?" Bella asked carefully, straining her ears in an attempt to hear the men's voices. So far, no yelling.

"I don't think that's what he had in mind," Jacob said doubtfully, walking to the doorway to eavesdrop, too. "He wouldn't tell me anything. All I know is that he's been holding extra council meetings this week."_ Damn it! Why did I say that? She didn't need to know that!_

Bella thought, _Oh, I bet I have a pretty good idea what he has in mind._ After a little more reflection, she sighed. Edward's secret was one she was likely going to have to keep for the rest of her life. Just like she kept the secret of her mother's abortion two years ago, her grandmother's insane last words, and now this hospital ban. But by god, if nobody in this gossip-happy little town was going to respect _her_ secrets, it was better to just own what she'd done.

"Jake, I have something to tell you. I did a bad thing."

xXxXx

Billy didn't look at his oldest friend when the kids went to the kitchen, just kept his eye on the TV while Charlie fiddled with the remotes. "You had no right to torture three men. I didn't realize the blood between us was that bad."

Charlie settled down in his recliner, so that he and Billy would be of equal height, not one towering over the other. Onscreen, the pitcher shook off one call and nodded at another before winding up his pitch. Mindful of the children, Charlie turned up the TV volume so they wouldn't hear the conversation.

"That had nothing to do with it." He didn't ask Billy why he'd chosen to come to him at home rather than the police station. It was a tribute to their lifelong friendship that Billy hadn't called an attorney. "And I didn't torture anyone."

"No, your _daughter _did."

"Don't you dare hold it against her. I needed her to practice using her new Taser, and Sam's guys happened to be there that night, in need of an excuse to sidestep prosecution. If it makes you feel better, she couldn't bring herself to shock them for longer than two and a half seconds, and she apologized." Bella had to be told, repeatedly, that it was a necessary thing, and that she wasn't responsible for anything that happened. It absolutely terrified Charlie, mostly because he feared she'd be too afraid (or God help him, too weirdly guilty) to use her stun gun when she genuinely needed it to save her own life. "They barely even lost consciousness, for God's sake."

"It's still not right. One of them could have had a heart condition."

"Heart condition, my ass. They beat the shit out of four men."

"Four drug dealers."

Irritated but trying not to show it, Charlie switched to his Official Police Business face. "It's a crime to take the law in your own hands, Billy. They should have taken pictures, gotten some video, or even just called 911."

"What the hell for? So your guys could take their sweet time getting there and let the real criminals get away?"

"No," Chief Swan said sharply, "so I could call in a Haz-Mat team from County. Do you know what happens to crystal meth if you don't constantly attend to it while it's cooking?"

Billy had to admit that he did not. He just knew a drug was a drug.

"It explodes," the Chief answered. "Meth labs absolutely _must _be dealt with by a Hazardous Materials team so as not to endanger anyone in the vicinity. That includes the criminals, the cops, the vigilantes, the neighbors, the kids riding their bikes across the street, everybody. We had to evacuate an entire trailer park in under four minutes! A lot of people could have been killed, and I'd have been forced to file murder charges on Sam's crew _and _the meth cooks because the deaths occurred during the commission of another crime. So don't storm over here, get pissy with my daughter, and tell me how to do my fucking job. You keep your boys on a leash, or next time they _will _be prosecuted, and no amount of voluntary pain endurance will get them out of it. You got that?"

Billy exhaled roughly, but nodded. "You didn't tell Sam about any of that stuff," he grumbled. "Kids getting hurt if the trailer blew up."

"And give him a reason to go looking for more meth labs when he was already high on his own little accomplishment?" Charlie shook his head. Sam was a natural leader, this much was obvious, and his intentions were admirable. But he hadn't planned ahead or considered the safety of others when he decided to play DEA, and that made Charlie nervous. "No thank you."

"I'll have a talk with him," Billy said, mostly to himself.

"Do whatever you want, they're your boys," Charlie conceded. "Just remember, all three of them made the choice to go down there. It's not like Sam just forced them to go against their wills."

Billy had no response to this, but the gears in his head were turning. After a few moments went by, Charlie offered, "You still want to watch the game?"

Billy watched as the Mariners' left fielder made a magnificent catch. "Yeah." After a beat, he added, "You know your daughter is dating some boy, right?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Charlie answered, wondering if Billy was on a quest to cross as many personal boundaries as he possibly could in one night. There was a time when Billy wasn't like this, back before the diabetes took his legs and patience and before a car accident took his wife. Sarah, God rest her, would have already told her husband to mind his own business, only it would have come out as 'hush up and watch the game.'

"You know the kid?" Billy asked cautiously.

Even though Bella had not yet divulged the identity of her boyfriend, Chief Swan knew _exactly _who it was for one simple reason: he remembered the Valentine roses. Mrs. Nguyen at the flower shop, though she didn't like gossip, understood the importance of keeping an eye on these damn crazy American teenagers, lest their delusions of living on the set of some stupid teen drama spill over and ruin decent, hardworking people's lives. Besides which, she had a deep and abiding respect for authority. So when the Chief of Police came into her shop yesterday, she was only too happy to look through her old credit card records and find out whose card had paid for a $200 order of long-stem hybrid roses delivered to his house.

The fact that it was the same boy who'd saved Isabella from Tyler Crowley's van did not go unappreciated by the chief.

Charlie shot his friend a look, daring him to push any further. _So help me God, if he brings the Cullens into this, I will lose my shit._

"I know his father. That's enough for now."

Billy looked as though he wanted to say more, but he turned back to the TV and stayed quiet until the kids brought in some dinner. He'd tried Charlie Swan's patience enough for one night, and if he wanted to be allowed back through the door to keep an eye on things, it was best not to upset Charlie any further. Really, Billy learned all he needed to know: Charlie Swan still had a misplaced faith in the wrong people, and Isabella didn't know enough to trust and respect an old family friend who only wanted to protect her.

xXxXx

Later that night, Billy called an impromptu meeting to discuss matters with the other council members, who didn't appreciate being summoned after bedtime for anything less than a life threatening emergency.

Regarding Sam, Paul, and Jared, none of the elders happened to be familiar with the particulars of manufacturing crystal meth—apparently they'd never seen _Breaking Bad_—but then, Sam hadn't exactly spelled out a strategy to take out an entire meth operation when he initially told the council he wanted to hunt down one local meth dealer. One sensible councilmember wondered why, if Sam's boys knew they were looking for a chemical lab, they didn't anticipate being in the presence of _dangerous chemicals._ They couldn't attribute Charlie's actions (or Bella's) to a hidden agenda, but even though the boys had been released without being charged, it still _felt _like a civil rights violation had occurred. The idea of hiring an attorney was floated for the umpteenth time that week.

Old Quil—who'd fought bravely through two tours in Vietnam, caught shrapnel in his left leg, and lost half the men in his squad thanks to the command decisions of a spectacularly stupid first lieutenant—didn't stand for half-assed plans or whiny bullshit. By god, he was damn sick of hearing people suggest lawyers and civil suits against the police department and other such horseshit. He declared that if the council was going to continue letting Sam take these kinds of risks, not to mention imposing those risks on his unit, then everyone had to be prepared to deal with the consequences, including the possibility that someone might get hurt or killed. If the council didn't like it, then they shouldn't just blindly green-light any damn stupid, half-cocked mission Sam came up with. As for Sam, Old Quil thundered, he was sitting at home licking his already healed wounds while his mother made him fish stew, not stuck in some hellacious shithole of a POW camp getting his skin peeled off his face or bamboo shoved under his fingernails. If he was serious about choosing a warrior path, he was going to have to take his punishments when he got caught and suffer his injuries like a fucking man, and the council had no business coddling him, god damn it!

At least two members of the council wondered to themselves if Old Quil always ran for his council position unopposed because nobody wanted to endure that much profanity in a public debate.

The appearance of a Cullen at the Swan house was universally troubling; the rest of the council was every bit as worried as Billy about Bella's safety where an overly attentive vampire was concerned. However, they asked the questions Billy hadn't thought to ask: why did Bella Swan have a new stun gun in the first place? Did Charlie have his own reasons to fear for her well-being? Did this have anything to do with the increasing number of drug-related crimes taking place in Clallam County, or the fact that she'd nearly been run over once already? Was Isabella, as the police chief's daughter, a target for someone else? Was she traveling with the most feared boy at school because she—or her father—thought the boy would protect her from some other threat? How much did she actually _know _about the Cullens?

Thanks to Poker Nights at the Swan household, Harry knew that Bella was clever, curious, and willing to listen to people's stories. The girl spent enough time in Urgent Care to have heard about the tribe's hospital ban from any number of gossiping nurses and orderlies. Furthermore, Leah had confided in her father that Sam Uley was prone to broadcasting the Cullens' _personae non gratae_ status in front of townie visitors to the reservation, like an _idiot_. So while it was understandable why Isabella might be sympathetic to the Cullens, there wasn't enough evidence to believe she was the victim of some kind of vampire-Jedi mind trick. At least, not yet. That didn't mean the vampire wouldn't take advantage of the situation eventually. There was a difference between resisting one's appetite in public and resisting it in private.

Harry was in favor of breaking with tradition and passing along a subtle warning to the girl, but he doubted Billy would be the best man for the job. He was the first to tell Billy that his problem wasn't that Bella Swan didn't trust him; it was that any girl who was being trained to use a Taser on grown men three times her size was not likely to have much respect for an old fart who invited himself over to her house and behaved like an asshole.

xXxXx

"Are you all right?" Edward said the moment Bella called. He sat in a tree across the street from her place, wishing Charlie would go to bed already so he could come to the house and talk to Bella in person.

"I'm pissed, but I'm okay," she said grudgingly, looking out the window until she saw the glow of a cell phone. "What the _shit, _Edward? You took off like a bat out of hell."

"It was an attempt to be diplomatic. The Quileutes don't trust me as it is."

"I didn't realize fleeing the scene was considered an act of diplomacy."

"Flaunting my relationship with you would only have antagonized them."

"Billy was already plenty antagonized," Bella informed him, staring daggers at his tree. "You _knew _that, and you left me alone with him anyway."

"I just went far enough to stay hidden, but I was nearby the whole time. He wasn't going to _hurt _you."

"He wasn't exactly delighted with me."

Edward said in a low, surprisingly deep voice, "I heard. His grandfather would be ashamed of such manners."

"Excuse me? You're worried about his _manners?_" Bella snapped. "If that's your first concern about any given situation, I'd like to remind you that you were plenty rude to me when we first met."

"From what I gathered, he had an independent reason to be upset with you, 'Man-burner.' I can't believe you didn't tell me about that, but you told _Jacob._"

"First of all, Jacob's dad already knew, so it was only a matter of time before Jake found out anyway. Second, I don't owe you every tiny, shameful detail of my life—"

"This isn't a question about what you had for breakfast, Bella! You should have said something!"

"Oh, you're giving _me _hell about withholding information?" Bella threw her hand in the air, as if to smack Edward upside the head. From across the street. "Apparently Billy has his own reasons to hate you, and they go back a lot further than Tuesday."

"Are you taking _his side?_"

"I didn't know I needed to take a side until tonight," she answered, trying not to shout. "You never told me I was supposed to be avoiding landmines. I thought there was nothing more to it than an ancient division of boundaries, maybe some distrust. Not a hospital boycott and an ongoing turf war I could get caught in the middle of!"

"There _is _no turf war," Edward argued. "There's just turf."

"Nobody's pissed about a line on a map," she hissed. "People _are _the turf. _I _am goddamn _turf_."

Edward became silent again, letting Bella's words soak in.

"I need you to tell me the truth, Edward. Have you or anyone else in your family ever hurt any of them, even by accident?"

"Never," Edward swore. "They wouldn't have entered a treaty with us if we had."

"Well I _have_," Bella replied, leaning on the window sill. "I hurt three men from their tribe. I didn't want to do it, but it's done. And then Billy shows up just in time to see _you_ driving me home." Softly now, she said, "You understand what this means for me, don't you? What it means for Charlie?"

"I don't believe Billy sees it that way," Edward offered. "Not after your father explained things."

"You don't know that," Bella said, though she hoped he was right. "For all your mind reading and your sister's fortune telling, you don't actually know anything, do you? If you did, I wouldn't be in this position."

It was true. Edward could hear a reaction, and sometimes Alice could predict the outcome of a decision, but even together they couldn't predict someone else's gut reaction, and predicting the subsequent fallout from something unforeseeable was guesswork at best.

Edward shut his eyes, afraid to see the look in hers, even from fifty feet away. "Bella, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, sure," Bella said, swallowing and looking away. She had an urge to curse, hang up on Edward, and lock the window for the night, but there were more pressing matters than having the last word. "What happens next?"

"Whatever you want," Edward promised immediately, and much too hastily.

She stared out into the dark. "We don't have to stop seeing each other, do we?"

"No," Edward insisted. "The purpose of the treaty was to live and let live." He felt himself coming to the decision as he spoke it. "Billy Black may not like that I'm seeing you, but he'll have to get over it, because there's not a damn thing he can do about it. It's not for anyone else to govern my life." Still feeling the shame of the entire fiasco, he added, "Next time, I won't just run. But I want you to think about something: what do you think will happen if Billy shows up again, and I hold my ground?"

Bella, though relieved at Edward's resolve, was nonetheless unsure how to answer the question. "I don't know," she finally admitted.

"Neither do I," Edward told her.

Bella pressed her forehead to the cool glass. "So what do I do now?"

After some thought, Edward said, "This isn't a command by any means, but I think you might want to avoid the reservation for a while."

"I've only been there _once_ since I moved here. What does not going there again prove?"

"Nothing," Edward said. "It just keeps you out of Billy Black's immediate line of sight. Right now he's suspicious of me because he saw us alone in a car, but he doesn't realize you know what I am. I'd like to keep it that way." Considering the situation, he added, "It's probably a good idea to avoid La Push anyway. It won't be long before the gossip spreads about your Taser practice. And don't give me that 'Jacob won't tell anybody.' He's a kid. He'll talk."

Bella rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure he'll spread that around but leave out the part where I'm running around with a Cullen. Because _that's _how gossip works. What do you expect me to do, preemptive tweeting?" When Edward didn't answer right away, she said, "I'm not doing that."

"I wasn't—"

"This isn't middle school, Edward. Billy's the concern here, not his kid. A forty-something-year-old man isn't going to follow my Twitter feed."

Accepting this unnecessary advice (but also wondering why Bella never told him she had a Twitter account), Edward said, "The good news is the boy didn't seem to bear you any ill will." Indeed, Jacob's reaction to the Taser Incident had mostly been shock and disbelief, a half-mumbled promise to keep it to himself, followed by an abrupt change of subject. "Just let some time pass, and everything will be forgotten."

This was a typical vampire answer to everything related to human long-term memory. Bella, who still remembered her 7th grade locker combination, wasn't buying it.

"How long is that supposed to take, you think?" she demanded. "When summer rolls around and everyone's partying at First Beach, am I still going to be avoiding an entire _tribe_ of people? Nothing suspicious about that. They won't think I'm under your influence…just that I know all about tribe secrets. Or that I'm holding some kind of grudge on your behalf. Or that I'm a racist, man-burning bitch." She sighed, wondering why in the hell she came to Forks instead of moving to a boarding school in California, like some lame tween sitcom on a cable network.

She hoped Jacob didn't decide he hated her; he was a decent kid, and it would suck if he held something against her that was beyond her control. But as for what anyone else thought…"There is no length of time that will make the men I hurt forget what I did. Just like there is nothing on this earth that will make Billy forget that I came home with a vampire."

"I know," he sighed, wondering if falling in love with the daughter of Chief Swan could have ever played out any other way. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

"Now I need you to be honest with _me,_" Edward said. "Why didn't you tell me about stunning Sam?"

"Because I was ashamed of myself," Bella said quietly. "It was a horrible thing to do."

"That's understandable," Edward replied, trying to sound comforting and non-judgmental. "Is there anything else I don't know?"

_That stun gun was meant for you._ "Yep."

"Care to elaborate?"

Bella closed her eyes, thinking of the one called Jared and the gurgling sound he made. Could she really do such a thing to Edward? Would he or his family ever put her in a position where she'd have to? Would the relationship hold strong if she told him why she was keeping her Taser?

"Not really."

And Edward, who had failed to mention that, now that Bella knew he was a vampire, his entire family expected her to join them in immortality any day now, whether she agreed to it or not, said: "Fair enough."

xXxXx

When Jacob's friends eventually passed along the gossip that someone (not Bella, but an anonymous someone at the police station, because there was no way in hell Sam's crew were letting it get around that they'd been incapacitated by a hundred-and-ten-pound-girl) had stunned Sam senseless in exchange for avoiding arrest, Jake managed to act as though he didn't know much about it. His reaction was, "Fuck that guy. He's a dick. I totally saw him making eyes at Leah's cousin."


End file.
